by J. V. Jones
Clan Scarpe. The memory of smoke rising above the Scarpe tree line cooled Raif’s face as quickly as if it had been stroked with ice. If something had happened to bring the two clans into dispute, and Clan Orrl had crossed swords with Clan Scarpe, then Mace Blackhail would make sure that it was Orrl that paid the highest price. He might call himself the Hail Wolf, but he was a Scarpeman through and through.
Raif closed his eyes. He felt tired enough to lie on the frozen ground and sleep with the dead.
He knew there was no way of knowing for certain if the torching of the Scarpehouse was connected to the mummified bodies on the ridge—Scarpe collected enemies like flat roofs collected rain. Yet even if the two events were unrelated, there was still a hard truth to be learned here. The Clan Wars were spiraling out of control. Mace Blackhail had ordered the killing of Orrlsmen. The Scarpe roundhouse had been torched. Ganmiddich had been taken first by Bludd, then by Blackhail. Dhoone survivors were still unhoused and scattered, yet it was only a matter of time before they massed for a strike against Bludd. When would it end? When every guidestone was smashed to rubble and every clansman dead?
Raif looked northeast toward Blackhail. After a few minutes the lines around his mouth hardened, and he went to strip clothes from the corpses.
He found no game to kill that night. The thought of Ash sitting alone while he hunted kept him close to the camp. The night was dark, and there was no moon showing, and the sky seemed close enough to touch. Wind moving down from the mountains froze the saliva on his teeth and made his eyes stream with stinging tears. His breath glaciated upon his fisher hood within minutes.
He returned to the camp dragging numb feet in the snow. They had not traveled far from the Orrlsmen, just enough to put the sight of death behind them. Camp was a dry storm channel thatched with willow switches and laid with willow leaves and moss. The clothes Raif had stripped from the Orrlsmen had been beaten free of ice and were now laid over the gelding’s back so they would be warm and dry by morning. Ash had offered to help, but he had set her the task of building the fire and preparing the dried fox supper instead. Skin had peeled off with the dead men’s clothes, and although it bore little resemblance to living flesh, Raif had not wanted her to see it.
Ash was awake when he entered the shelter, sitting with her knees tucked close to her chest. Smoke choked the air—too much to escape easily from the smoke hole—and Raif could tell by the length and fierceness of the flames that Ash had been feeding the fire.
He stripped off his gloves and came to kneel beside her. She was shaking as violently as if she’d been pulled from freezing water. “Here,” he said, tucking the blankets around her shoulders. “You need to cover yourself properly.”
She smiled weakly. “No kill tonight?”
“No.” His gaze took in the pile of willow branches he’d collected for firewood; there was no longer enough to last the night. Ash had burned more than half their stock. “Did the voices come again?”
She lowered her head as she nodded. “They never leave me now. Sometimes they’re not strong, and I can push them back. Other times it’s as if they’re standing right beside me . . . and I can smell them . . . and they’re cold and their eyes are black and dead. It’s so easy, they say. So easy. All you have to do is reach.”
“Do you know what they are?”
“Men. At least they once were men . . . it’s as if the shadows on the outside have found a way in.” Ash swallowed hard. “They hate us, Raif. They’ve been shut away for so long, and all they can do is imagine what it’s like to be free. It’s cold there, and no light ever touches them . . . and they’re in chains, and the chains are made of blood. They call me mistress and say they love me, but their words are all lies. There’s thousands of them, thousand upon thousands, and each and every one of them is waiting for me to reach.”
Raif leaned over and fed more willow to the fire. He understood her need for warmth now.
As yellow flames dripped onto the new wood and the frozen clay walls of the shelter shivered in the changing light, Ash said, “Why do I exist, Raif? If what I can do is so terrible, why was I born?”
Her eyes were bright in the firelight. A patch on her bottom lip was red and tattered where she had chewed on it. Raif wanted to take her in his arms and crush her until she was warm and safe and unafraid. He wanted to say, It doesn’t matter what you are capable of. If you breached the Blindwall this night and let loose an army from the Blind, I would stay by your side and protect you. You are clan to me now. Instead he said, “All of us are born with the ability to bring death and suffering. Some of us have to fight harder than others to cause no harm.”
It was not the answer Ash wanted, yet he could see her thinking as she pushed smoke away her face. “You fight it too, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
She edged closer to him, so that their shoulders and arms were touching, yet kept her gaze on the fire as she said, “Why do you stay with me, Raif? You don’t want anything from me. There’s no reward for taking me to the cavern. We could both die in the cold and the snow, and by the time someone came upon our bodies we’d be like those Orrlsmen on the ridge, blue and white and frozen.”
Raif sat still and did not speak. How could he answer? Staying with Ash was all he had, yet he could not let her know that. She might pity him . . . and that was something he had no need for. After a time he leaned forward and stoked the fire with his staff. “I think we’d better sleep.”
Ash looked at him without blinking, yet he pretended not to notice as he shouldered down beneath his blanket, closed his eyes, and waited for sleep to take him.
The screaming of the wind woke him before dawn. The fire was long dead, and the temperature in the shelter had dropped below freezing. Ice smoke hung in the air above Raif’s body, like a small piece of his soul. He lay still for a while and listened to the wind, as Tem had taught him. The high-pitched whistling told of air forced through mountain passes and needle-thin fissures in rocks. The undertone of white noise, a sound as soft as a mother shssing a baby to sleep, spoke of ice. The wind was full of ice.
Although he didn’t much feel like it, Raif rose. Pain shot through his hands as he contracted muscles locked by cold. His left eye was frozen shut, and when he rubbed his beard, dead skin and ice crystals flaked into his hand. He needed to heat water and render the last drops of fat from the fox, yet the idea of going outside and collecting more fuel for the fire rested like an undigested meal in his belly. He rubbed his left eye until it ached and scarlet colors bloomed against the inside of his eyelid, and then pried the eye open. Some portion of ice held fast, and as he forced back the lid a handful of eyelashes were plucked clean.
Raif damned the cold.
Gathering his blanket around him like a cloak, he crossed to where Ash lay sleeping against the back wall of the shelter. Breaths so shallow they hardly raised her chest exited her mouth with little scraping noises. Raif spoke her name, loudly, afraid she might not wake.
Her eyes blinked open.
Raif concealed his relief. “It’s morning. We must be ready to leave within the quarter. Wrap up well. There’s ice on the wind today.”
He left her alone then, as he always did, aware that women needed time for themselves after waking. Breaking up the roof thatch, he pulled himself free of the shelter and entered the ice storm beyond. The land was white and shifting, driven by winds that could be seen and touched. Great webs of ice hung from bent and crippled pines, and hoarfrost grew on everything that lived like a plague. The snow underfoot was so hard and dry it snapped like panes of glass beneath Raif’s feet.
Head down, arms crossed over his chest, he made his way toward the prostrate willow where he had tethered the horse.
The gelding was in a bad way. It had not fed during the night. Veins around its mouth and eyes were chilblained and broken, and despite the many blankets and articles of clothing spread over its back, it was shivering violently. As soon as it heard Raif, it whickered so
ftly and came toward him on uncertain legs. Raif stroked the old horse’s nose, oddly touched by its desire to be near him.
Ash came out to join them sometime later, huddled in every scrap of skin and wool she could find. The harsh, shadowless light showed up the yellow tones in her skin and made her lips look the same color as her face. She smiled weakly. “I see now why they call this land the Storm Margin.”
Raif hardly knew how he managed to smile back. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that the Storm Margin didn’t begin true until they’d crossed the mountains and entered the strip of land that ran the length of the coast.
Ash motioned to the pile of clothes tucked beneath the gelding’s blanket. “You need to put on some of those things, the ones you took from the . . .” She let her words trail away.
Dead men, he finished the sentence for her in his mind. Ash shivered as if he had spoken the words out loud. Raif felt like shivering too, but he turned and began unloading the horse instead.
They fitted well, the dead men’s clothes, sitting over his back like garments tailored for him alone. The Orrl cloak he had taken was the same white blue color of snow, and Raif found some small measure of satisfaction in being rendered invisible in the storm. Orrlsmen were famous white-weather hunters, able to feast on fresh meat in the dead of winter when all other clans were grinding their teeth on cured elk. Their badge was the ice hare, and Tem said that no one moved as swiftly and silently through snow as an Orrlsman. Raif touched the cap of his tine out of respect for their skills. Orrl was a hard clan, with a hard clanhold, and it had been loyal to Blackhail for a thousand years.
He pushed the thought away. What Blackhail did, what any clan did, was not his business now. Forcing his mind into the present, forcing his senses to deal with the storm, he saddled the gelding and prepared for the journey west.
The dead men’s clothes warmed his back.
FORTY-EIGHT
A Night at Drover Jack’s
That new girl of yours is a witch,” said Clyve Wheat. “No. An angel,” corrected Burdale Ruff. “The ability to know what a man wants before he knows it himself comes from the heavens, not the twelve sheepless hells.” Burdale Ruff spoiled the eloquence of his words somewhat by belching with great satisfaction at the end of them. With a smile made sloppy by drink, the great hairy eweman apologized, then belched again.
Gull Moler could appreciate the compliment inherent in a goodly belch as much as the next man, but the current subject of discussion was of too great an interest to him to risk being diverted by one of Burdale Ruff’s infamous after-supper performances. Before blond-eyebrowed Clyve Wheat and little rat-faced Silas Craw could spoil the conversation by snickering at Burdale’s antics, Gull said hotly, “I’d hardly call Maggy a girl. She’s long past the days of pink ribbons and shoes that pinch. She’s a widow, you know. A widow.”
Clyve Wheat, who was not as drunk as Burdale Ruff yet no cleverer for it, nudged Silas Craw with such force that the little eweman nearly fell from the beer cask he had taken to sitting upon in light of the shortage of chairs. “A widow, he says! A widow! Well, all I can say to that is she must have wed before she was weaned from the teat. For I tell you now that woman is no older than my sister Bell.”
Silas Craw, who had righted himself with the quick, ferrety action of a man well used to being pushed, grunted in agreement. “Bell!” he said with feeling. Everyone waited, but he said no more.
Gull Moler frowned as he looked from man to man. They were blind stinking drunk, the lot of them. What did they know about women and women’s ages? With a sniff he judged fitting to his position as owner-proprietor, Gull squeezed his well-fed body between Burdale Ruff’s and Clyve Wheat’s chairs and began rounding up the empty tankards, pitchers, and serving bowls sitting on the table.
Burdale Ruff caught his arm as he withdrew. “Taken a fancy to our Maggy, have ye, Gull?”
Having been owner and sole proprietor of Drover Jack’s for fourteen years, Gull Moler was well accustomed to drunks and drunken talk. Experience told him the best way to deal with a man who was overpotted and overopinionated was to purse your lips in deep thought and then proclaim loudly, “Aye! You might well be right.” Nothing took the fight from a man like agreement. Yet in this instance Gull could not bring himself to agree. Not about Maggy. It just wasn’t right.
He cleared his throat. “Maggy’s a decent woman, Burdale Ruff. Keeps herself to herself. I won’t have you upsetting her with drunken comments and low talk.” As he spoke, Gull tried to keep his voice low, but as always happened in taverns when conflict between men erupted, wind of it passed from patron to patron like the scent of a good pork pie. By the time he’d finished his last sentence, he was speaking in a silent room. Gull was suddenly aware he was hot. The three dozen patrons of Drover Jack’s, many of them still wet and steaming from exposure to the storm that raged outside, waited to see what Burdale Ruff would do.
Burdale Ruff was not the largest man in the Three Villages—that honor went to dim-witted Brod Haunch, who broke rocks for a living—but by far he was the most feared. He was an unpredictable drunk: the worst kind. He could switch from jest to threat in less time than it took to draw a pint. Gull could feel Burdale’s big, sausage-shaped fingers pressing into his arm. The eweman’s small eyes shrank to pinpoints, and suddenly he did not look drunk. Without releasing his grip on Gull’s arm, he kicked out the table to give himself space to stand.
Gull spared a thought for the table legs; they would need to be sanded then polished. Burdale Ruff’s wet, peaty-smelling breath brushed Gull’s cheeks. The knuckles on Burdale’s free hands cracked one by one as he curled a fist. Gull feared broken chairs and broken tables. Blood on his fine oak floor. Bent pewter. Spilled beer. Patrons who might leave without paying full due. It was only as Burdale Ruff’s right arm—muscled like a bull’s throat from the machinelike action of shearing sheep—made the small retraction necessary for a big punch that it occurred to Gull Moler to fear for himself.
He closed his eyes. Prayed to the spirits of tavernkeepers past to save his chairs, his tankards, his hide.
With eyes closed he did not see what happened next. Footsteps tapped across the wood floor, their rhythm coming to an abrupt end with a woman’s cry of pain. A chair toppled with a mighty crack. A clamor of noise followed as metal tankards bounced off tables and hard objects dropped to the floor. Clyve Wheat hissed loudly, “Damn it!”
Gull risked opening his eyes. Maggy Sea stood to the side of him, bending over to rub her ankle, an empty tray pressed to her chest. “Forgive me, gentle sirs,” she said in her most golden-toned voice. “I twisted my ankle on Farmer’s Lane this morning. I never thought it would betray me tonight.”
Gull followed her gaze to where Clyve Wheat and Silas Craw sat at Burdale Ruff’s table, soaked to their skins and dripping ale. Their hair was plastered to their heads, their eweman’s mustaches dangled over their lips like limp bits of rope, and puddles were forming where their elbows touched table wood. Gull blinked in astonishment. Maggy Sea had flung a whole tray’s worth of beer at them. Miraculously, it would occur to him only later, without spilling one drop on Burdale Ruff.
Gull’s attention snapped back to Burdale as a queer puff of sound exited the eweman’s lips. Burdale was not looking at Gull. Burdale was looking at his two drinking companions. His fist was still clenched, but there was air between his fingers. For one frozen moment all was still. None of the thirty-six patrons in the tavern moved or spoke. Burdale Ruff stood, breathed, deliberated.
Then laughed. It was like watching a volcano erupt. Burdale’s large mouth flew open, his nostrils flared, his head came back, and a sound like rocks exploding from a summit came forth from his lips. Most importantly to Gull, he released his grip on Gull’s arm and slapped his fist on his own large belly as he rocked back and forth in merriment. Within seconds everyone in the tavern was laughing. Tears came to one man’s eyes. Another laughed until he choked, and another still fell under the t
able, where he laughed until his wife put her boot to his throat.
Gull Moler never laughed at customers; it wasn’t good for business. Instead he frowned at the puddles of ale on the table and floor, while attempting to work out his losses. For some reason, though, the sums that usually came so easily to him got muddled in his head, and all he could think of was Burdale Ruff’s fist.
Maggy Sea wasn’t laughing, either. She had put down her tray and was now, very discreetly, mopping up the mess. In the ten days she had worked at Drover Jack’s, Gull had never known her to spill as much as a thimble’s worth of ale. Now this. Gull looked at her more sharply. Had she done it on purpose to divert Burdale Ruff’s attention?
“Aye! Maggy,” said Burdale Ruff. “Let me give ye a hand with that. You need to rest that ankle. I was on Farmer’s Lane myself two days back, and it’s as potholed as my father’s arse. It’s a wonder you didn’t break a leg.”
Gull Moler watched in astonishment as Burdale Ruff bent down on all fours and began collecting the pewter tankards that had rolled to the floor. The small speech he had made marked the end of the entertainment, and patrons turned back to their own tables with the swiftness of rats bailing ship. Gull, suddenly realizing he had been standing and staring for far too long, shook himself and headed to the back to fetch towels.
Ten days Maggy Sea had been here. Ten days without a single fight. Business had never been better or run smoother. The beer taps were clean enough to pump mother’s milk. The oak floor shone like a serving platter, and the wick oil in the lanterns had been forced through a wire cloth so fine that it burned almost entirely free of smoke. All Maggy’s doing. She had improved the quality of food served, rising before dawn each day to cook fresh beans, pea and bacon soup, and lamb shanks crusted with mint—she even baked her own bread! She had cleaned and varnished the Drover Jack’s sign, unclogged the storm drains, located an old and mysterious leak in the roof and mended it with cordage as a sailor would a ship, and even taken to distilling the barrel dregs and making a rough but surprisingly palatable wheat liquor from them that she had christened Moler’s Brew. All in all the woman was a wonder.