A Cavern of Black Ice (44 page)

Somehow, despite everything, Ash found
herself moving south. Five days had passed since she'd escaped—enough
time for the Rive Watch to grow bored and ease off the hunt. They had
a whole city to search. How could they possibly watch over every
street corner and marketplace?
I'll just get close enough to
look
. It was midnight. She could cross the city and reach the
gate before dawn. As long as she stayed clear of Mask Fortress and
the watch towers, she'd be safe.

Gradually she increased her pace.
Walking with her head down and her hand on her hood, she avoided all
contact with strangers. When she drew close to the massive shantytown
of animal hides, elk bones, and ice-rotted timbers that had grown up
along the city's west wall, she altered her course to avoid it. The
smell of deer fat, dung smoke, and thousands of unwashed bodies was
enough to keep her away. Even from
a
safe distance, she
could still see the massive circle of snowmelt caused by the heat and
the filth.

The farther south she traveled, the
cleaner the city became. Narrow streets gave way to wide causeways
and smoothly paved squares. Brightly lit taverns and coarsehouses
were replaced by limestone halls and tightly shuttered manses with
bronze doors. Fewer prostitutes stood warming themselves by charcoal
braziers, and fewer drunks urinated against walls. Even the snow
underfoot grew lighter—not white exactly, but certainly
gray
.

It took Ash a full five minutes to walk
past the unlit facade of the Quarter Court, where the grangelords
stood in judgment of all crimes except treason. It had been built by
the tenth Surlord Lewick Crieff, Lord of the High Granges, whom
everyone called the Halfking, and his badge of a half-moon shining
above the knife-edge peak of Mount Slain was cut into every limestone
cap, ledge, and corbel. After checking to see if anyone was watching,
Ash stopped and rested her back against the black, soot-encrusted
stone. She was growing tired, and tiny hobnails in her whore's boots
were cutting into her feet. Ash cursed the bidwife who had sold them
to her, thought for a moment, then cursed all whores as well. She was
beginning to wonder if heading for Vain-gate had been a good idea.

Ahead lay a vast cleared space
surrounded by a circle of standing stones known as the Dreading Ring.
Six gibbets stood in the center of the circle, massive T-shaped
timbers forming a dark scaffold against the sky. Justice was swift in
Spire Vanis, and once a man or woman had been convicted of a crime,
he or she was marched straight from the Quarter Court and punished in
the stone circle for all the city to see. No one was ever hanged—the
grangelord's executioners were chosen for their skills with knives,
not rope—but the bodies were hauled up later to feed the crows.

All but one gibbet was empty. The small
body that was roped there hung like an empty sack. A sharp burst of
wind made the rope creak and set the body swinging.

Ash edged back along the wall, suddenly
unsure of herself. Running away had been a mistake. She had nowhere
to go, no one to help her, no plans beyond the need to survive. Soon
she'd run out of money… then what? She had no skills. Her
description was posted around the city. Many of the
brothers-in-the-watch knew her by sight. Pushing back her hood, she
took a long hard look at the gibbets. Her scalp was hot, and sharp
edges of newly cut hair prickled her skin. She longed for the safe
enclosed space of her chamber, for Katia's endless chatter, warm
baths, sweet food, and clothes without rough edges. She wanted her
old life back.

Abruptly she pushed herself off from
the wall. She had made her choice five days ago, and giving in
because she was tired and her feet were aching and she didn't like
the look of the way ahead was stupid.
Stupid
. She
would
carry on walking. She
would
go to Vaingate and see the place
where she was abandoned and then found.

Kaaw! Kaaw!

Ash jumped as the shadow of a raven
glided over her face. Looking up, she saw the great bird swoop down
from the roof of the Quarter Court and soar toward the gibbets. As it
entered the circle of ancient stones, it rolled its wings, catching
an updraft that lifted it almost vertically alongside the occupied
gibbet. Hovering for a long moment, it jabbed its bill into the face
of the corpse and pecked out some bit of sinew that snapped like a
snake as it came free. With the morsel held firmly in its bill, the
raven beat its wings and rose to the top of the gibbet. Settled, it
threw the strip of sinew into the air, caught it, and gobbled it up.

With its throat muscles still working
to push down its meal, the raven swiveled its neck and looked at Ash.
Bobbing its head up and down, it clucked and cooed like a mother hen.
Come. Join me. Good flesh
.

Ash shivered. Although she didn't much
want to, she took a step forward, then another. The snow was sticky
under her feet, streaked with tar and spilled blood. Moonlight poured
into the stone circle, running like liquid silver along the
crossbeams of the gibbets. The wind dropped as she neared the center,
and for the first time all night she felt the cold. The bird, black
as the bricks at the back of a hearth, fussed and cooed until it came
to rest by the occupied gibbet.

The body was strung up by cordage as
thick as a man's wrist. Tarred ropes wound between its legs, around
its neck, and under its arms. It took Ash a moment to realize the
body was naked, as the flesh was stained dark by what might have been
excrement or mud. Crows had been pecking for days, and the soft flesh
of the belly had been opened and the guts spilled. The eyes were dark
holes, picked clean. Teeth roots showed where lip and gum tissue had
been torn away. The head was shorn.

Ash swallowed softly. It was a woman.
It hardly looked it, as the breasts were gone and the genitals were
obscured by a knot of rope and clotted blood, but what was left of
the waist and hips formed a slack pouch of curves. Frightened, Ash
gazed upon the face once more.

That was when she saw it. A lock of
hair caught in the rope. Dark, curly hair.

Promise to take me with you when
you go
. Ash took a step back. No…

Moonlight shifted, and shadows on the
corpse's face fell into place. Ash saw the high curve of a cheek, the
dimpled hollow of a chin.

Why, you're wicked, miss. Plain
wicked!

Ash began shaking her head. Her stomach
churned and churned until she thought she might be sick. The corpse,
the
thing
that was and wasn't Katia, watched her with dead
eyes as it swung upon its rope.

Katia! Katia! Katia
! The raven
took to the air, beating its knife wings, screaming and triumphant as
it vanished into the night sky.

Ash did not know how long she stood in
the stone circle, facing Katia's corpse.
Not long enough
, a
small voice told her.
If you stayed here forever, it wouldn't be
long enough
. When a gray sun began to rise in the east and the
city started to creak to life, she turned and fled north…
deserting the little maid one last time.

Duff's

They rose before dawn and headed
southeast. High winds blew, creating a snowstorm from old frozen
snow. Raif pulled his fox hood over his eyes and mouth so only his
nose showed. The small specks of taiga he saw through the fur were
all he needed to guide his horse. The wind came from the north and
blew at his back, and it seemed to push him away from the clanhold.

Angus took the lead, taking Raif along
gullies and over frozen ponds, finding trails long lost to the snow.
Neither he nor Raif spoke. They sat, hunched low on their horses, and
suffered the battery of the wind.

Raif's bowhand was swollen, and
the skin on his fingertips had begun to shed. An ugly blister, dark
and bloody as a kidney, had formed on the heel of his hand. Every
time he grasped the reins to make an adjustment, pain made him close
his eyes. Beneath the fox fur, his mouth set in a grimace. Well, that
would teach him to go axing wood on a night as cold as hell.

After six hours spent in darkness,
dreaming violent unspeakable dreams, the biting whiteness of the
snowstorm and the mindless monotony of riding through the taiga were
a relief. Raif had risen before Angus. He had heated fat and stock
from the ptarmigan in a small tin pot, and while he was waiting for
the steam to thin, he had made the only decision he could. Clan was
behind him now; remembering it, longing for it, believing that
somehow in the future he would find a way back, were things he could
not allow himself.

He had fixed his own fate, and now he
must live with it. He was no longer part of the clan.

He had thought long and hard about
discarding his lore, of throwing it in the iron stove along with the
remainders of the last meal or taking it outside and burying it in
the snow. But each time he grasped it in his hand and pulled on the
twine, he heard the old guide speak.

It's yours, Raif Sevrance. And one
day you may be glad of it.

So Raif kept it. He rode, his thoughts
sealed as deeply as cached meat, his raven lore a cold bit of horn
against his skin.

Half a day passed with no relief from
the storm. The snow, rolled to hard pellets by the wind, rattled like
hailstones against the trunks of stone pines. Great clumps of snow
dropped from overhead branches, dislodged by the violent push and
pull of the air. Raif did not hunt. His right hand wept pus and blood
into his mitt, and the storm created a whiteout. Yet almost against
his will he found himself searching for game.

Even on a day like this living things
were out in the forest. A weasel, white and sleek as a dish of milk,
watched Raif's passing from the cover of a paper birch. An ice hare
popped its head out of its burrow, its cheeks puffing as it drew
breath. In the overhang above a frozen stream, a snagcat broke shrew
bones with a single snap of its jaw. Raif was aware of all these
things, swore he
saw
them, yet when he peered through his
fox hood, little more than the white haze of snow on the move met his
eyes.

Darkness came early. The wind died with
the light, leaving the forest feeling hollow and used up. All the
trees had been stripped of snow, and many of the first-year saplings
were snapped and broken. Overhead, the sky shifted from gray, to
charcoal, to black.

Angus led them to the strip of taiga
that bordered along the Southroad, and they followed the road's path
from a discreet distance through several hours of darkness. Wagon
tracks, horse dung, bones, and cast-off scraps littered the road,
reminding Raif that soon he would come into contact with clansmen. In
fine weather, taking a direct route, a man could ride from the
Blackhail roundhouse to Duff's in a single day. Even the Dhoonehouse
was only four days' hard ride from Duff's, and Gnash and Dregg were
nearer.

When the glow of Duff's Stovehouse
finally appeared over the rise, Raif was stiff with cold. His neck
ached with a hard, nagging pain, and his hand burned. Angus made a
signal, and they cut onto the road. Quarter of an hour later they
reached the stovehouse.

Duff's was a stocky building with
rounded walls and a rounded roof. Built from great, tree-size elmwood
timbers and banded with iron staves, it looked like a giant beer
barrel knocked on its side and sunk deep into the snow. Two doors led
inside. The largest led to the stables, and Angus and Raif headed
there first. Raif brushed down Moose and the bay while Angus
exchanged quiet words with the groom. The groom was young, blind in
one eye, and he spoke with a soft, hesitant stutter. Raif had seen
him many times over the years, but until he watched Angus speak with
him, he had never seen the young man laugh or smile. When the
exchange was over, Angus grasped the groom's hand and bade him,
"Stable the horses near the door."

Raif glanced around the dark,
well-ordered stables. Over half of the two dozen boxes were occupied,
and a handful of sturdy cobs and mountain-bred ponies stood in the
lean-to outside.

It was a long walk to the stovehouse's
second door. Piles of newly dumped snow mounded along the stovehouse
walls. Hoarfrost sparkled on the timbers, and high upon the roof,
where the brick chimney cut through the wood, snow could be heard
hissing and sputtering as it melted.

Heat, smoke, smells, and sounds blasted
against Raif'sface as he pushed open the door and entered Duff's.
Even as his eyes worked to grow accustomed to the light, his mouth
watered at the smell of charred fat, elk meat, and onions. Normally
at this hour someone would be singing and some crusty old clansman
would be blowing the pipes. People would be laughing and arguing and
gaming recklessly, yet although over thirty men and women sat or
stood in the bright, wood-walled stoveroom, they kept themselves in
small groups. Raif recognized a small party of spearmen from Clan
Scarpe, their hair either black by birth or dyed that way, their
weapons sheathed in intricately plaited cords that were designed to
show the sharpness of their blades. A man and woman from Clan Gnash
sat warming themselves by the great brick and metal stove. The woman
wore her waist-length red hair unbound in the manner of all Gnash
women. She was dressed in soft pigskin pants, and the belt around her
waist was weighed with the Three Daggers: one horn, one steel, and
one flint. A great circle of Dhoonesmen dominated the room. Massive
men, they were, with blond hair, full beards, and blue ink tattooed
into their faces. Strapped to their backs, waists, thighs, forearms,
and calves were their weapons. Steel as perfect and brilliant as
running water sent knifelight flashing through the room.