A Cavern of Black Ice (45 page)

"Step away from the door, lad,"
murmured Angus close to Raif's ear. "Let's not give the patrons
too long to think on who we are, or why we're here."

Raif, as if woken from a trance, obeyed
his uncle's order and made his way to the back of the room. Talk,
which had come to a dead halt the moment he and Angus had entered,
resumed with the hushed frenzy of cockroaches escaping from light. As
Raif picked a bench to sit at, as far away from the stove as it was
possible to be, Angus exchanged nods with the stovemaster.

Duff had a bit of every clan in him, at
least that was what he claimed. He was the hairiest man Raif had ever
seen, and in his youth he had been famous for his teeth. Logs,
barges, carts, carrion, and sleds: With a rope between his teeth,
Duff had hauled them all. His teeth were still splendid to this day,
and as he brought over a tray steaming with hot shammies, hot beer,
and hot meat, he grinned broadly, revealing surprisingly small but
perfectly even teeth. Raif remembered Tern asking Duff once how he
had got his teeth so strong. "I used to crush pond ice with
them," he had said.

"Angus! You old dog! How long's it
been?" Duff's brow reflected a moment of strenuous thought as he
loaded his goods on the table. "Aye, I canna be bothered
thinking. Too long, that's for sure."

"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. Tern'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 Duffs.

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 stove-house. 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 greater 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 Tern'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 guide-stone 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.