A Cavern of Black Ice (50 page)

As Raif followed his uncle's gaze, the
mountain shivered beneath his feet, sending chips of shale rolling
down the slope. The ice on the tower made a soft, knuckle-snapping
sound as a hairline crack ran down along the rime. "Why don't
they just knock it down?" he heard his voice say.

"Pride, lad. The Killhound of
Spire Vanis is said to roost upon the Iron Spire that caps it. Five
hundred years ago they'd haul traitors up there by a great
contraption of metal and rope and impale them on the spire. The
winged beasties were said to gobble them up for breakfast."
Angus squinted into the clouds that wrapped themselves around the
tower. "Or was it supper? I forget now."

They led their horses away. Raif grew
hotter and more uncomfortable as they hiked across a shoulder of
pitted limestone and then down into a ravine. Massive stone conduits
built to divert the runoff around the city had to be crossed with
care, as the ice was unstable and wet. Moose tore his left hock on a
jagged edge, but Angus refused to stop and bind it, and they left a
trail of horse blood in their wake.

An hour later, when the gate finally
came into view, Raif felt nothing but relief. His stitches itched
like all the hells, and so much fluid had leaked from his blister to
his glove that the hide had hardened to armor and set itself in a
permanent curve around the reins. Raif wanted to go to some dark
stovehouse and sleep. He was tired enough that he would not dream or,
if he did, not remember it later.

Angus gave the gate a name and struck a
path down from the mountainside toward the wall. It was smaller than
Hoargate, made of plain stone that arched as gracefully as a drawn
bow. No road of any kind led from it. No one stood waiting for
admission—indeed, there was
nowhere
for anyone to
stand as the gate opened directly onto a grassy slope. As they drew
level with the first gate tower, a hoarse cry split the air.

"Get her!"

A child stepped through the gate. A
girl. Hearing the cry, she hesitated, glanced back, then started to
run. Two men, dressed like beggars but carrying swords of bloodred
steel, emerged through the gate and ran straight for her. The girl
was weak and very thin, and they caught her in less than ten seconds.
She fought them in a quiet, almost animal way, not making a sound,
but kicking and jerking furiously, making it difficult for the men to
hold her. Her hood was torn off and then her gloves. Her
shoulder-length hair was caked in dirt. An ice sore cast a shadow
across her lips.

More men came. One man was massive,
with hands that swung at his side like lead weights. His small eyes
glinted like iron filings. Raif watched in growing anger as the big
man approached the girl and smacked her full in the face. The girl's
neck snapped back, and she stopped struggling. Blood trickled from
her nose to her lip. The big man said something to the others, making
them laugh in an excited, nervous way that seemed more to do with
fear than amusement. He struck the girl again, casually this time,
with a half-closed fist.

Raif felt his blood heat. He stepped
forward.

Angus put a hand on Raif's arm, barring
him from taking another step. "There's trouble here we want no
part of. That's Marafice Eye, Protector General of the Rive Watch. If
he chooses to torment a beggar girl outside one of his own gates,
there's nothing you or I can do about it."

Raif continued to press forward. The
man named Marafice Eye tore off the girl's cloak. Fabric ripped. A
breath of fear puffed from the girl's lips.

"Easy, lad," warned Angus,
fingers digging deep. "We canna afford to draw attention in this
place. More than your life and mine depend on it."

Raif glanced at his uncle. Angus' face
was grave, the lines around his mouth as deep as scars.

"If it were just you and me alone
in this, I would save her. Believe that. I would not lie about
another's life."

Raif did believe him. He saw what was
in his uncle's eyes. Angus Lok feared someone or something greatly in
this city… and he was not
a
man who feared lightly.
Raif stopped pushing. Angus released his grip. A group of six armed
men now surrounded the girl. All but two were dressed in muddy cloaks
and ragged pants, yet Raif began to realize that none of them were
beggars. Their steel gleamed with linseed oil, their hair and beards
were trimmed and clean, and their arms and necks were corded with the
sort of hard muscle that was built during long practice sessions on a
weapons court. The one named Marafice Eye was dressed in a rough
brown robe, like a cleric or a monk. Despite his size he carried only
a handknife. All the men deferred to him.

The girl had lost the sleeves and
collar from her dress. She was being held by three men, only one of
whom was dressed in the same oiled and supple leathers worn by the
guards at Hoargate. The girl's body was twisted so that her skirt
rode up around her thighs and her head hung down, unsupported.

"Let her drop."

Raif heard Marafice Eye's words
clearly. Immediately the three men released their hold, and the girl
slumped to the ground. She remained silent as Marafice Eye poked her
with the toe of his boot.

"Thought you'd run away, eh?
Thought you'd made a fool of the Knife?" He jabbed her twice in
the ribs. "Thought you'd get away with leaving one of my men to
die." Bringing the heel of his boot down on her hand, he drove
her fingers into the snow. Something snapped with the soft click of
rotted wood. Still, the girl did not cry out.

Raif felt the anger come to him. He
imagined killing the six men in slow and hideous ways. Clansmen would
never do such a thing to a woman. A small voice whispered,
What
about the Bluddroad
? but he cut it from his mind.

"Go on. Run. Let's see just how
far you'll get." Marafice Eye shoved his foot under the girl's
back, raising her torso off the ground. "
Run
, I said.
Grod here has a fancy for the hunt. You remember Grod, don't you? You
left him a lock of your hair."

The girl tried to struggle to her feet.
She was so thin; Raif wondered where her strength came from. Making
the mistake of putting her weight on her damaged hand, she inhaled
sharply and collapsed back into the snow.

That was when she spotted them.

The six armed men had spread out,
allowing her room to stand, and the space between her and Angus and
Raif was now clear. Raif got his first real look at the girl free
from shadows and darting bodies. Something in his throat tightened.
She wasn't as young as he had first thought.

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' bow case.

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.