A Cavern of Black Ice (83 page)

He clearly remembered the day,
thirty-four years ago now, when he had led a raid on the
Trenchlander settlement of Cedarlode. He had been chief less than a
year, and a dry spring had forced the Cedarlode Trenchlanders out of
their forests and onto his borders to search for game. Trenchlanders
hunted by setting fires. They torched whole corridors of forest to
force the creatures living there to flee ahead of the flames. If a
fire went well and the winds blew true, they could kill enough game
in a single day to feed an entire settlement for a season. While
Trenchland hunters stood at the fire's mouth, waiting to spear
fleeing game, cindermen moved across the scorched and smoking
charnel, bagging freshly charred carcasses.

Vaylo shuddered. He hated
Trenchlanders. He had seen them destroy a thousand-year-old timber
line in half a day.

When they started lighting fires on his
borders, he had been quick to act. Eight score of his best hammermen
and spearmen rode east with him to Cedarlode. A skirmish of sorts had
taken place. Trenchlanders were no match for Bluddsmen, and even
before the battle was met the Trenchlanders began to withdraw.
Vaylo's lips stretched in something close to a smile. Stone Gods! He
had been arrogant that day. Suddenly, in the heat of easy victory, it
wasn't enough to force them back to their own bounds. Why not drive
them farther? Claim land along the Choke River that Bludd had always
coveted? It was so
easy
. Vaylo clearly remembered laughing
with Jon Grubber and Masgro Faa as they'd bludgeoned a dozen
Trenchlander cindermen along the red mud banks of the Choke.

Four hours it took them. Four hours to
claim the river and the high bluffs beyond. Afterward they danced in
the shallows. Masgro Faa found women, as Masgro always did, and
although Vaylo himself didn't take part in the rapings, he watched as
others did. When they had done with the women, they drank themselves
stupid on elk milk turned green and beer as watery as piss. In the
morning, still drunk with victory and the lingering effects of green
milk ale, they headed back to the Bluddhold.

Less than an hour later the Sull halted
them in their tracks.

Five hundred of their warriors
surrounded them. Pure Sull, dressed in lynx furs so rich and supple,
it seemed as if they rode with living predators at their backs. Their
horses were like no others: breathtaking, silent, oiled like
machines. Long recurve bows gleaming with rendered wolf fat rose
above the horses' haunches like masts.

Until the Sull had shown themselves,
Vaylo had not seen or heard a thing, so softly did their horses'
hooves break ground.

Vaylo clearly remembered that not one
Sull—not even the foreguard—drew a single arrow from his
case. They didn't need to; Vaylo knew that straightaway. Superior
numbers, superior ground, superior weapons, formation, and
foreplanning were all theirs. He also knew that if he'd had twice or
even three times their number, the Sull would still have bettered
him.

It was the first real lesson he had
learned as the Dog Lord: The Sull were not to be crossed.

The Sull held their positions for as
long as they chose to. To this day, Vaylo could not decide how much
time passed as the two mounted camps faced each other. Sometimes he
thought perhaps it was minutes. Other times he knew it was hours.
Then, suddenly, without an order being called or any signal that
Vaylo could see being made, the Sull turned as a single body and
headed back into the woods. Vaylo could still remember the breeze of
air and clay dust they created, still recall the equal mix of fear
and wonder he had felt.

No words had been exchanged, no weapons
drawn, yet the message was unmistakable: Trenchland is Sull land.
Stay clear.

Vaylo had never set foot on Trenchland
since. He protected his borders—vigorously—yet never once
had he or any Bluddsman under him claimed as much as a hair-thin
strip of Sull land for his own. Sull borders were sacred. He had
known that even as he had ridden to Cedarlode with his men that first
day, yet he was chief, and he was shiny with new power and brash with
jaw, and he'd thought he could take them on.

Thinking back on it now, Vaylo knew he
had gotten off lightly. The Sull could have slaughtered them all that
day. Yet they had chosen to teach a lesson in might instead.

And the Dog Lord never forgot those.

Frowning, Vaylo studied the Surlord's
daughter from the safe haven of the hearth as she sat on the maid's
stool and held the bloody kerchief to her nose. If she had any Sull
blood in her, nothing in her coloring or face betrayed it. Still, he
could not discard what his instinct told him. The Sull were not
people of earth and clay like clansmen; they lived in a land of cool
nights and silver moons, surrounded by oceans of rippling icewoods as
tall as mountains and pale as frost. Sorcery lived in their blood.
All their cities were built to let in the light of the moon. The Sull
were night and twilight, shadow and shade, and Vaylo knew in his
bones that the substance he had seen rolling upon Asarhia March's
tongue was something they would recognize and claim as their own.

"Vaylo," came a soft voice
through the wood of the door. "I have brought food and malt."

"Enter, Nan," he called.

At nearly fifty years of age, Nan
Culldayis moved more gracefully than any other woman in the clan.
Vaylo watched her as she walked across the room, her fine head held
perfectly level as she bore, then deposited, the tray. He noticed how
little lines above her brow deepened as she looked at the girl. The
habit of care ran deep within her. Like Cluff Drybannock an hour
earlier, she left the room without a word.

Vaylo took the malt and drank from the
jar. Food, all his favorites—charred blood sausage and pork leg
roasted so slowly that it fainted from the bone—had been laid
out on a platter with sotted oaks and the kind of fancy honey cakes
that all women loved yet Nan knew he hated. Vaylo took a second
mouthful of malt, letting its sweet, hellish flames burn his tongue.
Nan thought to slip a treat to the girl.

Shrugging, he tipped a full measure of
malt into the hollow jug stopper and handed it to the girl. She drank
it in one, then looked up for more.

Vaylo brought the jug. "There's
fancies if you want them," he said, topping up the stopper.
"Honey and spices and like." The girl looked at him. "I'd
rather have the meat." It was then, under the scrutiny of those
clear gray eyes, that Vaylo Bludd began to regret what he had done.
Asarhia March didn't belong with Penthero Iss in Spire Vanis, in his
world of silk-lined walls, rose-scented candles, and chamber pots
with lids that fit so tightly that not even light could escape. Yet
he was going to send her back there all the same.

Breaking a knuckle of pork, he said,
"I've sent an osprey to your foster father, telling him you're
here. It will only be a matter of days before a sept comes to fetch
you."

The girl's face registered no surprise.
"What? No ransom?"

"That's my business." Vaylo's
voice was harsh. His teeth ached savagely, and he pushed away the
tray of food. The girl was right: She would not be ransomed, just
handed over as quickly as copper pennies between a trapper and his
whore.

The Dog Lord owed the Surlord. Oh, Iss
and his devil's helper denied the existence of any such debt. It was
always My
master wants nothing in return for his assistance with
the Dhoone raid
, or
We think that you're the best man to
take control of the clans
. Yet the words held no truth. Vaylo
had been a chief for too long not to know that all things came at a
price. Iss wanted something. Vaylo wasn't sure what, but he knew
enough to suspect that war in the clanholds suited the Surlord
nicely. And helping the Bludd chief take the Dhooneseat was as good a
way as any to start one.

Whatever the motive, the deed was done.
Vaylo would not look back on his past and wish things different. He
would not allow himself that weakness. He and his clan were at war,
and every day that war got bigger as each and every clan was drawn
into the dance of swords. Old hates resurfaced and new hates were
created, and Vaylo was cold enough a man to see that if he was canny
enough and moved quickly enough, there was much to be gained amid the
madness. He, the Dog Lord, bastard son of Gullit Bludd, born with
only half a name and half a future, might be the first Bludd chief
yet to name himself Lord of the Clans.

Yet for now he had a smaller goal on
his mind. Vaylo glanced at the girl. He hated being indebted to any
man, most especially when that debt was as cloudy as Trenchland beer
and reeked in the same foul way. Penthero Iss held his marker, and
now, thanks to the keen eyes of Cluff Drybannock, Vaylo had a way to
get it back.

The Surlord's daughter. Return her to
Iss and all debts were paid in full. There'd be no more devil's
helpers scratching at his door, upsetting his dogs, and suggesting
courses of action he
might
like to take in voices more
fitting to milkmaids than men. He and the Surlord would be free of
each other. And that was fine with the Dog Lord. As fine as fine
could be.

The day the news of the girl's capture
had arrived at the Dhoonehold, Vaylo had thrown the osprey into the
air himself. She was a comely bird, heavy as a newborn, trained by
the cloistresses in their mountain tower, capable of flying the cold
currents of dawn and twilight, and inbred with ancestral memories of
Spire Vanis. She would be there now, or perhaps even on her way home,
her left leg no longer burdened by the message she had carried south.
The Surlord's well-manicured fingers had probably stroked her
gray-and-white flight feathers as one of his helpers broke the seal.

Uncomfortable with his thoughts, Vaylo
banged on the door with his fist to summon Drybone. He could look at
the girl no longer. The message had been sent before he'd met her.
What was done was done. So she wasn't what he had expected Iss'
foster daughter to be: That was no reason to change his plans.

The girl's gaze was hot on his back as
he waited for Drybone to enter. She did not speak, but he heard the
malt stopper she had been holding in her hand roll to the floor. The
ghosts of grandchildren lost were suddenly heavy in the room, and for
a moment he expected to hear the words
Granda, don't send me
away
.

Drybone entered the chief's chamber.
His blue eyes met once with Vaylo's own and took from them what
orders he needed. He crossed immediately to the girl, seized her
wrist, and forced her to stand.

"Take the meat and see she eats
it." Vaylo jerked his head toward the tray.

Drybone led the girl to the table and
picked up the pork joint by the bone. His strength was such that even
with one hand he could hold her. One of the dogs whined as Drybone,
the girl, and more importantly the bone made their way toward the
door.

The girl turned on the threshold.
Holding her head high, she waited for the Dog Lord to acknowledge
her. "When do you intend to kill Raif Sevrance?"

Vaylo breathed deeply. Suddenly he felt
very tired and very old. The girl was exhausted, too; the corners of
her mouth hung down as she waited for him to speak. "I will stay
his execution until the day after you leave." His own words
surprised him, yet he made both his face and his voice hard as he
added, "On that you have my oath."

The girl looked at him for a moment
longer, then turned and walked away.

Putting a hand against the green
riverstone wall for support, Vaylo waited to hear the door latch
click. He had not expected her to thank him, yet he felt her lack of
response like a coldness against his heart. She would draw no more
sorcery tonight, he was sure of that, yet he knew she was someone he
could not control. Like the Sull that day in Cedarlode, it was a
matter of superior might.

Better to have her gone. Soon.

After a time he pushed himself off from
the wall and unhooked the dogs' leashes from the spit hook above the
hearth. Part of him wanted to climb up the three flights of stairs
that separated him from Nan's chamber and lose himself in her
hay-scented flesh. Nan knew him well. She would offer the kind of
familiar, homely comforts he was content with. Yet another part of
him wanted to be outside, with his dogs, walking through the sharp
river-scented air of Ganmiddich.

No one stopped or spoke to him as he
crossed the entrance hall and made his way outside. The Ganmiddich
roundhouse was high ceilinged, damp, lit by fish-oil lanterns that
made the walls slick with grease. Vaylo was glad to be free of it. As
soon as the great door closed behind him, he let the dogs run free.
Normally at such a time they would race off in all directions, their
massive lungs pulling scents of foxes, hares, and rats from thin air.
Tonight they chose to stay close to their master. Vaylo cuffed them,
told them to go and find some supper for themselves, as
he
had no intention of feeding them, yet still they would not go.
Cursing softly, he let them stay.

He led them to the river shore, and
together master and dogs watched the Ganmiddich Tower through the
dark hours of the night.

*** The assassin sat in a chair
well illuminated by the amber-burning lamp, yet Penthero Iss still
found it hard to behold her. He thought at first that the light had
perhaps dimmed owing to impurities in the fuel, yet he could detect
no increase or darkening of smoke. Finally, after several minutes of
study, he was forced to conclude that Magdalena Crouch was the sort
of woman whom it was difficult to
see
.

Magdalena Crouch, or the Crouching
Maiden, as she was known to the very few people in the Northern
Territories who could afford to deal death at the rate of one hundred
golds a head, waited for Penthero Iss to speak. She was perhaps
twenty, no, thirty, no, forty, years of age, with hair that may have
been either brown, red, or golden depending on the vagaries of light.
Her eyes he had given up hope on. Looking straight into them when he
had opened the door, he had seen nothing but his own reflection
staring back. She was slim, but somehow fleshy, small, but with the
limb length and bearing of someone much taller. Or was she simply
tall?