by J. V. Jones
Ash led the horse by its reins. Uneven snow cover made riding difficult, and she had chosen to walk instead. Raif did not like the look of the dark patches beneath her eyes and the yellowish cast to her skin. Gradually he was leading her to the taiga’s southwestern edge, where settled snow would make riding easier.
He suspected that they might already be in the Scarpehold, yet any markers that might have proclaimed that fact were buried deep beneath the white. Bannen and Scarpe were close neighbors, though there was little love lost between the two. Scarpe was sworn to Blackhail, yet its oath did not prevent it from encroaching on Blackhail’s southern reach. Its chief was Yelma Scarpe, and in the ten years she had led the clan she had annexed land from Bannen and Dregg and taken control of an escarpment that Clan Orrl had held for eight decades and was a prime site for hunting and spotting wild sheep. The Scarpe badge was a black weasel with a mouse in its jaws. The Scarpe boast was, Our words cut as sharply as our swords. Yelma Scarpe had fought no battles with Bannen, Dregg, and Orrl. No. She had simply talked them out of their land.
And now one of her clan was Blackhail’s chief.
Raif almost smiled. Inside his mitts, skin split as he bunched his hands into fists.
“Look!” Ash said, pointing to the northwest sky above the treetops. “Smoke.”
Raif followed her gaze. Smoke, greasy and thick with burned matter, billowed up in great clouds several leagues north of their position. The Scarpehouse. It had to be. Scarpe’s roundhouse was situated close to the Bannen border, on a greenstone bluff surrounded by a moat of poison pines.
Unease cooled Raif’s face. Who would attack Scarpe? Bludd had pushed no farther west than Ganmiddich, and now they were in retreat. Blackhail would not attack one of its own war-sworn clans, most especially when that clan was birthplace to the Hail Wolf. Was it Bannen or Gnash, then? Or dispossessed Ganmiddich? Or was it disposed Dhoone?
None of the possibilities were good. Any one of them meant an escalation in the Clan Wars. And for someone to attack a clan sworn to Blackhail meant Blackhail itself must respond.
“Raif! Stop! Why are you heading north?”
Raif had to glance over his shoulder to see Ash. She was many paces below him, on the trail they had been walking since dawn. He stared at his own footprints in the snow, following their course as they cleaved north away from the path. He shook himself hard. What am I doing? The torching of the Scarpehouse means nothing to me. Angry at himself, he headed down the slope and back onto the trail.
He set a grim pace after that. They emerged from the taiga at noon and traveled west along the frost fields north of the river. To the south, the rocky balds and escarpments that formed the tail end of the Bitter Hills cast dark, shifting shadows upon the water. The Iron Caves lay somewhere beneath them, excavated by Mordrag Blackhail, the Mole Chief, and seized by the Forsworn some hundred years later when all the iron seams had been mined out. According to Tem, the walls of the Iron Caves were black and sparkling, and no man could carry a knife there for fear of it flying from his hand. The Forsworn claimed the caves as a holy place. They believed the One True God had slept there the night after he Remade the World. It took Aran Blackhail, Mordrag’s grandson, twenty years to drive them out.
Directly ahead the pale blue peaks of the Coastal Ranges rode the western horizon like ships made of ice. Raif found himself staring at them for much of the day. It was easier to look forward than back.
From time to time they passed bits of freestanding wall, broken arches, and blocks of stone. Ruins. And they had stood in the clanholds longer than any roundhouse. Raif had seen such things on the Hailhold, made of the same milky blue stone that always felt cool to the touch, even on the hottest day. Tem had said that in the great white forests of Dhoone and Bludd whole cities stood buried beneath the snow. Clan Castlemilk was rumored to have taken its name from one such place.
Raif farmed the landscape as he walked, searching the grassbeds and shrub groves for bearberries frozen on the vine, rosehips, field mint, and the little wood ear mushrooms that grew on rotting logs. They had meat, but foxes were musty on the tongue, and Raif didn’t much like the thought of eating them on their own. Once or twice he spotted a glossy white ptarmigan hiding in the snow, yet he left the birds undisturbed. Ash knew he could kill game with a rock, she knew, but it didn’t mean he wanted her to see him do it.
When they came upon a grove of old willows, Raif called a halt while he cut himself a staff. The knife he’d taken from the Ganmiddich farmhouse was little use against the hard, finely grained wood, and it took many long minutes of sawing and twisting to cut a branch free. Ash, who had been riding since they’d broken free of the taiga, did not dismount as he stripped the stave of side suckers. She slouched in the saddle, her chin almost touching her chest. When she noticed Raif looking at her, she straightened her spine and made an effort to smile. Raif could not smile back. He was remembering what Heritas Cant had said about her, about how the power within her would press against her organs until they leaked.
Perhaps she read the thoughts on his face, for she said, “I’m fine. Just a bit tired, that’s all.”
“And the voices?”
“I fight them.” Her clear gray eyes met his, and Raif suddenly wished the voices were real men he could fight and kill, not shadowy nothings he could not see.
“You need to eat,” he said after a while. “Here. Take these.” He handed her a stem of frozen bearberries and a few of the rosehips he had collected. All clansmen who rode to the badlands for a season’s hunting carried a pouch of dried rosehips in their packs. The hard pink fruits stopped the shaking sickness from coming, even when there were no fresh greens to eat.
Ash grimaced as she bit into one of the buds.
“You’ll get used to them quicker than fox meat,” he promised. The smile she gave him warmed something deep and very cold inside his chest. “Let’s get going. There’s still an hour of daylight left.”
That night they camped in the lee of a hill, digging a burrow into old drifted snow. Raif hunted while Ash slept, bagging an ice hare he flushed from its den and a fat white ptarmigan who burst into flight when Raif stumbled upon its roost. Feeling pleased with his prizes, he returned to the dugout with plans for a midnight roast. The fox supper he’d prepared by boiling the dark, purplish meat in snowmelt had not been a great success.
He sensed something was wrong when he topped the hill. The night seemed suddenly dark and small, as if it had shrunk to half its size. The dugout looked the same as when he’d left it, and the fire was burning as well as an unattended fire could, yet something had changed. The air was colder. A nearby grove of aspens rustled and clicked as a gust of wind drove their trunks together like wooden sticks. Suddenly the night’s kills felt like ghost weight against Raif’s back, and he let them drop to the snow.
Ash.
Clutching the cold ivory of his raven lore, he raced the short distance to the dugout. The snow surrounding the entrance was clean except for his own footprints, yet even though no man or animal had entered the shelter he knew Ash was gone. Her body lay on the mat of willow switches he had spread to protect her from the cold. Muscles in her shoulders and upper arms were convulsing, causing her body to buck against the dugout’s floor. Her mouth was open, and something dark and tarlike moved within it. Oh, gods.
Raif squeezed his lore. An instinct he wasn’t prepared for made him want to run. He could smell the power inside her the way a dog smelled disease. Heritas Cant was right: It was something that wasn’t meant to be.
Kill an army for me, Raif Sevrance.
Raif shook his head, alarmed at how quickly the thought of killing her entered his mind. It would be a mercy, a small voice said. The world would thank you for it in the end.
“No.” Raif spoke the word out loud. He had no brother, no clan, and no memories stored in stone. But he had Ash, and he had sworn to protect her. And who was he to judge the value of another’s life?
Thinking of
Angus, imagining what he would do if he were here in the river valley west of Scarpe, Raif stripped off his gloves and knelt by Ash’s side. Angus had thrust a wad of wool in her mouth whenever she began to draw sorcery, so that’s what he would do. Swiftly Raif cut a handful of wool from Ash’s cloak and packed it in his fist. He tried to be gentle as he pushed the wad of fabric into her mouth, but his hands shook, and the desire to be rid of the dark thing on her tongue made him thrust the gag deep into her throat. Her stomach sucked into a hollow the moment the gag was in place, and he laid a hand on her rib cage and pushed hard to counter the reflex action to vomit. Despite the coldness of the dugout, droplets of sweat rose like blisters on Raif’s face.
Ash’s legs jerked. Cords of muscle in her neck rose as she fought the muzzle. Raif held her down, hard as he could, until her muscles fell slack under his hands. He stayed pressing her long after, his breaths ragged and his heart hammering against his ribs. Finally he released his grip, but only so he could tear the foxhides into strips to bind her. There was a taste in his mouth that might have been fear. He kept seeing the rippling blackness of the thing upon her tongue . . . the way it shifted and ran like liquid metal.
He was not gentle as he bound her.
Later, when he sat at the entrance to the dugout, turning the fire over with the tip of his willow staff, he wondered what would have happened if he had not returned when he had. Ash was silent now, her arms resting easy in their sheathing of blankets and rope. A Reach, Cant had named her. Yet Raif did not know what that meant. He had heard Cant’s words, yet they seemed like shadowy things, concealing more than they showed.
Raif put down the staff and held his hands above the flames to warm them. He tried to send his mind elsewhere, to the ice hare and ptarmigan that were lying unclaimed in the snow, to the dwindling stock of firewood, to clothes that needed airing, yet he made no move to start any of those tasks. Better that he stay here and watch over Ash.
Time passed and the fire burned low, sending little red flames to eat the insides of logs. Raif thought he would not sleep. The pain in his ribs ran deeper tonight than any other night, and his hands ached and wept. Still, his eyes closed and his thoughts stopped coming and he slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.
He awoke in darkness hours later, sore all over but strangely well rested. Before he stepped outside to relieve himself or feed the fire, he cut the lashings that held Ash’s arms to her side. The gag was drenched with saliva, and he had to force her teeth apart to pull out the expanded wool.
She opened her eyes as he removed his hand from her jaw.
Raif slid the gag behind his back.
Ash lifted her right arm and rubbed the section where the ties had dug deep. “How long?”
“Overnight. Just overnight.”
She looked away from him. He thought he saw her lip tremble, but a fraction of a moment later it was still.
He helped her to sit up. Already he was counting days. Another two to reach the Storm Margin. A week to reach the base of Mount Flood. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired. My arms are aching.” She made a face. “And something tastes bad in my mouth.”
“I’ll fetch some water.”
“Raif.”
He turned to look at her.
“Do you think we’ll make it? I was lucky this time . . . I woke.” She shook her head softly, her eyes darkening as memories filled them. “They’re so hard to fight. They’re stronger now. That day at the pass changed them. They came so close to breaking through they could taste it.”
Raif didn’t know how to reply. Ash needed to be told that she would make it to the Cavern of Black Ice alive and well. Yet Tem had not taught him how to lie. In the end he said, “I will slaughter the horse for blood and meat, carry you on my back, and walk until my feet turn yellow with ice before I give up or turn back.”
He bowed his head and walked outside to a frost so hard each breath stung like acid in his throat.
They left the dugout while it was still dark. If there had been a moon, it had long set, yet the ground snow glimmered blue and gray as if light from some distant source shone upon it. On Raif’s insistence Ash rode the gelding at a trot. Raif ran for short bursts to keep pace. Often he fell behind, as his mending ribs would allow him to take only so much air. When the sun rose in a brilliant blue sky, the granite peaks of the Coastal Ranges seemed close enough to touch. The winter sun made Raif nervous, especially when he saw Ash tugging at the collar of her cloak as if she were warm and needed air. It wasn’t warm. It was cold enough to freeze tears. And there were men and women in Clan Blackhail who could tell you all about the danger of believing that sunshine meant warmth. As many clan ears had been lost beneath a blue sky as in the deepest, darkest night.
Raif monitored his own body closely. His hands ached constantly . . . but at least they weren’t numb. “It’s when you can’t feel them there’s a problem,” Tem would always say, “not when you can.”
The terrain changed gradually over the course of the day. The great dark body of the taiga extended all the way to the Coastal Ranges, but the trees living within it altered as they neared the divide. They were smaller now, stunted by late spring frosts, midwinter thaws, and the black blight of snow mold. Hemlocks and spruce gave way to the twisted bones of whitebark and limber pines. The ground underfoot grew harder, and giant boulders riven with frost cracks studded the valley floor. Scraggy beards of bladdergrass and yellow moss occupied niches in the rocks, and prostrate willow hugged the ground like something spilled, not grown. The snow underfoot was as hard and dry as white sand.
The area reminded Raif of the badlands. He felt the same sense of cold drought.
By the time the sun reached its highest point he was no longer sure which clan’s territory he was in. He guessed they might be traveling through the Orrlhold, which was the most westerly of the border clans, but he also knew that a small creek named the Red Run lay somewhere out here, beyond whose banks Blackhail claimed all land west to the Ranges.
The Wolf River flowed to the south here, and Raif glimpsed its black oily surface at intervals throughout the day. Most of its tributaries were dry or frozen, and its mass remained unchanged as it flowed toward the sea. The Wolf River and its valley cut straight through the Ranges, and Raif knew it would provide the quickest, safest route to the Storm Margin.
They stopped briefly at midday and ate the last of the roasted bird. Raif watched Ash closely. Her skin was markedly yellow now, and there was something wrong with her face. The change was subtle, yet Raif recognized it for what it was straightaway. The tiny crinkles around her eyes and mouth were gone. Fluid beneath her skin was filling out wrinkles and depressions and making her cheeks swell. He had seen symptoms like these before, on Braida Tanna, elder sister to Lansa and Hailly, whose body had been laid in a hollowed-out basswood the month Drey took his yearman’s oath. It was poison, Inigar Stoop had said. The girl’s body had poisoned itself.
Raif made Ash ride the gelding at a gallop for long periods during the afternoon. He ran behind her, his feet pounding over frozen earth, his ears burning in the rushing air. At sunset she surprised him by calling a halt. He was some distance behind her, catching his breath against a massive snout of limestone, when he heard her call his name. By the time he reached the horse she had dismounted and was approaching a crop of rocks that lay on a ridge north of the path.
A small movement of Ash’s body turned him cold. She continued walking forward, yet she drew her arms to her sides and closed her mouth. Raif took a second look at the rocks. They were colored a delicate shade of blue gray, coated with hoarfrost and granules of snow, and they were not rocks at all. They were corpses. Six of them. Orrlsmen, judging from the strips of white willow plaited into their braids, and the pale, shimmering fabric of their cloaks. From the depth and condition of the surrounding snow, Raif guessed they had been here for less than two weeks, yet already the cold dry air had begun to mummify their remains.
Raif
took Ash’s hand. His gaze was drawn to the dark shadows beneath the hoarfrost crust: a blue eye, perfectly preserved, a mouth open wide enough to show the pink hump of a frozen tongue, a fist clenched around a column of air.
“What should we do?” Ash’s voice was a whisper.
As she spoke, Raif noticed a cap of beaten silver discarded a short distance from the bodies. “Nothing.”
“But shouldn’t they be blessed, buried, something?”
He could tell she was upset, yet he still shook his head. “My clan brought this death. It’s not for me to deal with the corpses they left behind.”
“How do you know it was Blackhail who did this?”
“That piece of silver over there belongs to Blackhail and no other. They killed these men, and when they were done, one of their number flicked the cap off his tine and drew a circle in the frost.”
“To honor the dead men’s memories?”
“No. You do not honor the memory of a man you’ve just killed. The circle was made to draw the eyes of the Stone Gods, so they may know there are souls to be claimed.”
Ash pulled free of Raif’s grip. “Why kill these men here, where no one lives?”
“Because we are on Blackhail land, and a state of war exists in the clanholds, and something has happened to make the Hail Wolf angry or nervous, or both.”
Raif dragged his hands over his face. Orrl was sworn to Blackhail. The two clans had shared borders for two thousand years, and for as far back as he could remember all disputes between them had been settled at the hearth. Now this. What was Mace Blackhail doing? What had happened to make him order such a killing? Orrl’s chief, Spynie Orrl, was no fool. He was the oldest living chief in the clanholds, outliving four wives, two sons, and a daughter. Dagro Blackhail had liked him well enough to invite him to hear vows at both his weddings, and when Spynie’s first greatgranddaughter had been born five years back, Spynie had sent Dagro ten head of blackneck sheep in celebration. Raif could not imagine Spynie Orrl attacking Blackhail. No man lived as long as he did by taking chances.