A Cavern of Black Ice (72 page)

Reaching up on her tiptoes, she worked
the latch on the side door that led out onto the court. Cold air
blasted her face as the door opened. Snow was swirling in heavy gray
flakes, and the wind was hard and from the north.
Another storm
,
Effie thought as she stepped outside. The third one in as many days.

The big stable door had been shut and
barred against the wind, and she concentrated on its shape and
thereness
as she made her way across the court. The open
space of the graze, the distant rise of the Wedge, and the far line
of the horizon were blurred by the storm, yet Effie knew better than
to look at them even now. Just the fact of their presence made her
heart race.
Not far to the little dog cote
, she told
herself.
Not far now
.

Jebb Onnacre, one of the Shanks by
marriage and caretaker of all their horses and dogs, passed within a
few paces of Effie on his way back from the stables. Seeing her, he
smiled and raised his hand in greeting. Effie liked Jebb; he was
quiet and good with animals and never said anything to anyone
whenever he found her in the dog cote. Normally she always waved
back, yet today she put her head down and ignored him. His boots were
caked in mud, she noticed. He might have sat and taken breakfast with
the man on the stairs.

Disturbed by that thought, she broke
into a run, heading north along the stable wall and into roughs
beyond. By the time she arrived at the dog cotes her squirrel
slippers were stiff with ice. Clutching the bed rug close about her
chest, she picked her way around the largest of the two cotes and
made for the small stone structure that lay behind them, its round
walls sunk deep into the snow like a miniature version of the
roundhouse. The little dog cote. Effie's chest tightened to see it.

Dog smells and dog noises defied the
bluster of the storm. Already one of the shankshounds had gotten wind
of her scent and was howling like a mad thing through the roof. Effie
grinned. That was Dark-nose, by the sound of it; he was always
howling about something. Crouching down by the little dog-size door,
she worked the latch and then jiggled the hinges as necessary. By the
time she had forced the door open, a wall of dogs was waiting for her
on the other side.

Effie's heart filled with joy. "Stop
that! Easy now. No chewing on my slippers. Give me that rug back! Bad
dogs. Bad dogs." The dogs accompanied her into their warm, dark
lair, tails wagging, tongues licking, amber eyes bright with interest
and affection.

Most people in the clan held that the
shankshounds were the nastiest, evilest, most foul-tempered beasts
that had ever fetched a stick on the Hailhold.
Hell-bred
,
Anwyn called them.
Bears with tails
, said someone else. Of
course, since one of them had found the crofter's baby buried alive
in the snow, a sort of legend had grown up around them. Due respect
was given… but always from a safe distance.

Anwyn had taken to sending Mog Wiley
out to the cotes with kitchen scraps, and Jenna Walker, who now acted
as foster mother to the rescued child, would not hear a bad word said
against them. Orwin Shank, who everyone held was the wealthiest man
in the clan, had even sent one of his best breeding ewes in payment
to Faille Trotter for making up a song about them. Effie had heard
the song. It wasn't very good, containing in her opinion far too many
words that rhymed with
dog
, but even she had to admit it was
a jaunty tune.

With Effie the shankshounds were as
soft and playful as kittens. Sometimes they didn't realize their own
strength, and once or twice she had returned to the roundhouse with
nips and bruises from where they had scrambled and jumped all over
her in their eagerness to greet her. That never bothered Effie much.
The bruises hardly ever hurt at all.

Perhaps sensing some vestige of her
earlier fear, the dogs were especially gentle with her as she settled
herself back against the closed door. Darknose probed her face with
his handsome wet nose, sniffing and concerned. Lady Bee came and sat
close, pushing her warm body against Effie's, giving her heat to the
scrawny little thing that had come in from the cold. Effie stroked
her fine black-and-orange neck. She had long ago worked out that Lady
Bee thought she was one of her pups. Old Scratch simply laid his
great old head on her lap and promptly fell asleep. Gaily and Teeth
worried at her slippers, making small breathy noises as they nipped
around her toes. Cat came and sat at a dignified distance from
everyone, waiting for a sign from Effie before she deigned to come
close.

Sitting on the hard-packed earth of the
cote with all the shankshounds around her, Effie finally felt safe.
Her lore was quiet now, sleeping. The thought of the man on the
stairs no longer frightened her, and she began to wonder if she'd
made too much of a fuss over nothing. Already she felt bad about
ignoring Jebb Onnacre on the court.

Darknose watched her with his clever
dog's eyes as the other shankshounds settled down in readiness to
sleep, each one determined to use some part of her body as a pillow.
Effie loved the feeling of their heavy heads and paws on her skin.
Even aloof and dignified Cat came to her in the end, tempted by a
hand stretched her way and the soft click of Effie's tongue.

Effie loved the shankshounds. They were
good dogs. They smelled a bit, but Jebb Onnacre had once told her
that she probably smelled just as bad to them as they did to her.

Snuggling down beneath her blanket of
dogs, Effie began to drift off to sleep. She was ever so glad she
hadn't gone running to Drey. The shankshounds would protect her.

Dreams of dogs followed her to sleep.

Grrrrrr.

Effie's sleeping brain first responded
to the sound of a dog growling by making it part of her dream. Yet
the growling went on and on, and soon other dogs joined in and the
noise became too loud to ignore.

Effie blinked awake. Strips of light
from the dirt hole at the back of the cote took a moment to get used
to. Even before she could fully see, she became aware of six dogs
standing in a half-circle around her, hackles raised, heads lowered,
tails flat against their docks. There was a moment where all she
could really see was yellow fangs and burning eyes, when she suddenly
understood all the bad things people had ever said about the
shankshounds. They could kill a man and not regret it.

Then, even as she raised a hand to calm
them, she heard voices from outside. Two of them. A man and woman,
shouting to be heard above the storm.

"She's witched, that girl.
Witched. Cutty swore she disappeared right afore his eyes. Reckons
she knew he was after her the moment he darkened the roundhouse door.
It's that lore of hers. If you ask me…"

Effie strained to hear more above the
howling of the wind and the snarling of the dogs. Pushing her palms
through the air, she worked to silence the dogs without speaking. She
had recognized the speaker instantly. That deep mannish voice
belonged to the luntwoman Nellie Moss. Cutty Moss was her son. He was
about Drey's age yet had never made yearman. Last summer he had been
caught stealing chickens from Merritt Ganlow's coop, and the winter
before that there had been some incident involving the Tanna girls
that Effie had only vague ideas about. She hardly knew Cutty Moss at
all and was quite sure he didn't live in the roundhouse most of the
year. The only thing Effie could remember vividly about him was that
one of his eyes was hazel and the other one was blue.

"
Hush, woman
!" cried
a hard male voice, cutting the last of Nellie Moss' words clean away.
"I'll listen to no more of your superstitious chaffing. The
Sevrance girl is no more witched than you or I. If she did slip away,
then it was likely because she heard that worthless son of yours
coming."

All the dog-given heat left Effie's
face. The second speaker was Mace Blackhail, she was sure of it. His
voice penetrated the stone walls of the dog cote like icy drops of
rain.

"Cutty's no fool," snapped
Nellie Moss. "He did as he was told."

"Then he'll have to do it again,
for I won't have that little bitch sneaking around the roundhouse,
telling tales and watching me with her father's dead eyes."

Hounds from the larger cotes yipped and
howled as Mace spoke, yet all he had to do to silence them was whip a
piece of leather through the air. The soft jingle of metal followed,
and Effie guessed that Mace had brought leashes to the cotes meaning
to save his best dogs from the storm.

"Making ye feel guilty, is she?"
Nellie Moss sounded pleased.

"Just do as we arranged."

"Twould be easier for everyone if
she could be caught outside by a cowlman's arrow… like Shor
Gormalin."

A quick series of sounds followed.
Boots thudded snow, fabric rustled, and then Nellie Moss issued a low
throaty wail.

"You'll not speak of Shor Gormalin
again, woman. Is that clear?" A moment passed where all Effie
could hear was the wind and the soft persistent growling of Darknose,
then, "I said, is that clear?"

A breath was taken sharply. "Aye.
Tis clear. No one will hear the truth of it from me."

"Good." A sound, like many
knuckles snapping, accompanied the word.

Effie sank back amid the shankshounds,
deeply shaken. Lady Bee began licking Effie's ears as she would with
a sick pup. Old Scratch, Cally, and Teeth were still intent upon the
people outside, spines lowered, snouts bunched and quivering.
Darknose and Cat, whom Effie always thought of as the leaders of the
pack, were alert, trotting to and fro in front of the door,
listening,
ready
. All of the dogs except Lady Bee continued
to growl.

Shankshounds. That had been Shor
Gormalin's name for them. Effie remembered smiling when he'd first
called them by it. Now she knew it was their real name. The only one
that suited.

A space opened in Effie's chest. Shor
Gormalin had known about dogs. He had known about her, too. He was
the only person who understood why she had to run and hide sometimes.
He'd even said he did it himself. That meant something to Effie. It
helped cancel out some of the bad things Letty Shank and the others
always said. She couldn't be
that
different. Not when the
best swordsman in the clan told her she reminded him of himself when
he was growing up.

Now something terrible had happened.
Nellie Moss had spoken as if Shor Gormalin wasn't really killed by a
cowlman at all, that somehow Mace Blackhail had arranged it.

Effie began to rock back and forth on
her haunches. She felt violently sick, as if she'd eaten a meal of
dirt and grease. When Lady Bee licked her ear again, she pushed the
dog away.
Shor Gormalin
. Mace Blackhail had killed Shor
Gormalin. He had hurt Raina and… Effie stopped rocking as a
thought smashed through the others like a rock breaking ice.

Mace had killed Shor because of Raina.
Shor loved Raina. He would have protected her, stopped her from
marrying Mace. Effie had seen how Shor was around Raina, how gently
he'd tended her when she'd first heard about Dagro's death. Anything
he
could
do for her he had. He'd taken over her duties with
the tied clansmen, seen to the stores of grain and oil… he'd
even ridden out to the Oldwood to check on Raina's traps.

Effie's stomach turned to liquid. Shor
had been working on Raina's behalf the day he had found her here, in
the little dog cote. Sickness flooded Effie's head and chest, and she
turned away from the dogs to vomit. Even as she ran her fist over her
mouth to clean it, Lady Bee began lapping away at what had been
produced.

"What was that?" Mace
Blackhail's voice suddenly sounded close. "Shanks dogs. With any
luck a fever'll take 'em." Mace Blackhail grunted. "Be off
with you, woman. And don't follow me here again. People will mark our
meeting." The leashes he held jingled. "Do your business."

"Cutty'll bide his time. He'll
wait till things settle and the girl has long forgotten him, and then
he'll take her in such a place as she canna get away."

A disgusted breath was almost lost to
the wind. "I want her gone, and quickly."

"My Cutty won't be rushed. Not now
he knows she's witched." Mace Blackhail said something, but the
wind drove the words away.

"Me and Cutty need no lessons in
trespass from you."

"And I need no lessons in
man-craft from a woman who lights torches for her supper. Go."
The word was spoken in a whisper, but it carried better than anything
else Mace Blackhail had said. So strong was its compulsion that Effie
found herself obeying it, edging farther away from the door. Even the
shankshounds quieted.

Footsteps receded toward the
roundhouse. All was silent for a long moment, then Mace called to his
dogs. A door creaked open, dogs shrieked and howled and dashed
through the snow. A wet nose probed the door to the little dog cote.
And then a command was spoken and Mace Blackhail led his killers
away.

Deep inside the cote, Effie hugged her
knees. The shankshounds formed a barrier of dogs around her, yet for
the first time in all the months she had been coming here she no
longer felt safe.

Men Buying Clothes
for a Girl

"How do you feel?" Raif's
face was grave as he asked the question. A scarred hand smoothed the
edge of the blanket that covered her.

"Well… I think." Ash
rubbed her eyes. "I feel a bit knotted inside, as if Heritas
Cant had bound all my organs with string." Raif didn't like
Heritas Cant; Ash could tell that from the brief twitch of muscles
around his mouth as she mentioned his name.