A Cavern of Black Ice (88 page)

Mace Blackhail. The thought came with
the strength and speed of a reflex action. Mace Blackhail wanted him
taken quietly, away from the fighting and the other clansmen. Far
better to deal with the traitor alone, get the whole thing over and
done, with no interference from the clan. Raif looked across the
bank, his eyes skimming over the wooded slopes and wet meadows of
Ganmiddich. Any moment he expected Mace Blackhail to ride forward on
his roan.

Drey secured the skiff's lines himself
and then straightened to address his men. "Rory. Arlec. Head
upstream on foot, find Corbie and Hugh Bannering and tell them the
Inch has been taken." He unsheathed his sword as he spoke. It
was the same sword he always carried at his back along with his
hammer, yet the grip was new doeskin and the blade had been oiled and
whetted to a high sheen. The metal gleamed with all the colors of the
storm. "Bev. You go with them. Fetch my horse and a spare pony
for the prisoner. Ride them back at haste."

Arlec Byce and Rory Gleet exchanged a
glance. Drey trained the tip of his sword on Raif's kneecap. "Go,"
he murmured, stabbing the bone. "I'll hold the prisoner until
you return."

Bev Shank was first to start east. Rory
Gleet and Arlec Byce were slower getting started, and Arlec looked
back several times as he headed along the bank. Raif wondered what
had happened to the axman's twin; the two were seldom far apart.

Drey held his position as he watched
the three men scramble over the wet gravel and storm-greased rocks
along the shore. Hailstones bouncing off his breastplate made ticking
sounds as seconds passed.

Raif's throat was dry. He was aware of
the blade point at his knee yet didn't look down to check for blood.
His eyes were on his brother.

Drey's face was banded by shadow. The
glove that held the sword was stretched white at the seams.
I'll
stand second to his oath
. Drey's words were suddenly there in
Raif's head. That and the image of Drey kicking his black gelding
forward on the court, one man among twenty-nine. The only one willing
to back his oath.

Raif almost didn't feel the rope being
cut. Drey's sword ran with light as he sliced through the horsehair
twine at Raif's wrist, yet no brightness found its way to his face.
Raif saw him glance east, to the grove of ancient water oaks that had
hidden Rory, Arlec, and Bev from view. Slowly, not meeting his
brother's eyes, Drey shifted his grip on the sword. "Take it."

Raif blinked. Drey pushed the hilt of
the sword toward him. "I said
take it
."

Confused, Raif shook his head.

Drey sucked in breath. His eyes darted
left then right. With a sudden movement he grabbed the edge of the
blade and drove the pommel into Raif's chest. "
Cut me
!"

No. Raif took a step back. He saw where
the sword edge had bitten through Drey's glove and drawn a line of
blood. Even as he watched the steel turn red, Drey moved forward,
grabbing Raif's hand and forcing it around the hilt. Raif fought him,
but Drey had always been stronger, and even before he could pull
away, Drey stepped onto the tip of the sword.

Metal punctured with a quiet hiss. Drey
tensed. His eyes darkened, and his lips twisted as he fought to take
the pain soundlessly… as Tern had taught him. Horrified, Raif
pulled the sword back. Blood, shiny and nearly black, oozed from a
jagged slit in Drey's breastplate. Raif lost his grip on the sword,
and it clattered against the rocks, making a sound that seemed too
loud.

"Go," Drey said, fingers
working to release the leather straps on his breastplate. "We
fought. You took my weapon from me, wounded me, then fled."

Raif moved forward to help Drey with
the straps, but Drey warned him back with a single glance. His face
was gray. Blood rolling down his armor pooled in the waist crease and
dripped from the runnels. The wound was high in the belly, just below
his ribs. How deep had the blade gone? Could it have punctured his
stomach or lungs?

"Go!"

 Raif's body swayed at the force
of the word. How
can you expect me to leave while you are
bleeding
? he wanted to scream.
We are brothers, you and I
.

Drey sucked in breath as he peeled the
breastplate from his chest. Fresh blood gouted from the wound, and he
forced his knuckles into the wetness. Seconds passed as he dealt with
the pain.

Raif forced himself to watch. He could
not believe what Drey had done. Drey Sevrance was not the sort of man
to commit treason lightly. He lived for clan, like Tem before him,
and his bear lore drove him hard and true.

When Drey next looked up his eyes were
clouded. With hands bloody from his wound, he poked at the packages
hanging from his belt. "Here," he said, snapping the horn
containing his portion of guidestone from its brass hook, "take
this. Inigar has hewn your memory from the guidestone. He cut a
portion of stone the size and shape of a man's heart and gave it to
Longhead to cart away. Mace had him smash it to dust."

Raif took a breath and held it. Excised
from the guidestone, like Ayan Blackhail, second son to Ornfel
Blackhail, who killed the last of the Clan Kings, Roddie Dhoone. Ayan
Blackhail had thought his father would thank him for putting an arrow
in Roddie Dhoone's throat, yet Ornfel Blackhail had turned on his son
and cut off both his hands. "An arrow is no way to kill a king,"
he had said. "You should have used your sword, or naught at
all."

"You are no longer my brother or
my clan," Drey said quietly, pulling Raif back. "We part
here. For always. Take my portion of guidestone… I would not
see you unprotected."

Their eyes met. Raif looked at his
brother and saw a man who could be chief. He did not speak. There was
no place for questions about Angus and Effie and clan. There was only
enough time to look at Drey, lock his face and his presence into
memory.

And in the end there wasn't even enough
time for that.

A shout sounded downstream. A mounted
figure crested the high bank above the river, pushing his likeness in
woodsmoke before him. A wolf's head cut into his breastplate had been
rubbed with acid until it burned, then worked with pure carbon so
that its blackness was one of empty eye sockets, open mouths, and
charred wood. Mace Blackhail. He had not spotted them yet.

For one brief moment Raif let himself
imagine that Drey was coming with him, that they would ride through
the Northern Territories, swords in hand, warriors and exiled
clansmen alike. It wasn't to be. There was Effie and clan… and
Ash. And days darker than night lay ahead.

Raif took the tine from his brother. He
had to leave now, before Mace Blackhail saw them together. Raif had
little care about himself—and there was something in him that
welcomed the chance of getting close enough to kill Mace
Blackhail—yet he would not endanger Drey. Not after this. Not
ever.

Drey's fingers were sticky with drying
blood; for a moment when he touched them, Raif felt them cleave to
his own. "Go, Raif," Drey said. "I'll watch over the
clan."

It was the softest Raif had heard Drey
speak since he had burst into the cell what seemed like a lifetime
ago. Raif looked into his brother's eyes one last time, then turned
away.

As he took his first step, he felt
Drey's hand capture his trailing fist. Something small and cool was
pressed into his palm. Feeling it, Raif thought his heart would
break.

The swearstone. Drey had kept it whole
and safe until today.

Lowering his head against the storm,
Raif headed west.

Ganmiddich Pass

Sarga Veys lay beneath the overhang
formed by a shelf of compressed and buckled slate. The great glacier
tongues that had once reached from the Breaking Grounds to the
Bitter Hills had churned up entire quarries of bedrock from the earth
as they withdrew. Even now, thousands of years later, the violence of
the glacier's retreat could still be observed in places. The northern
slopes of the Bitter Hills, just below the Ganmiddich Pass, was one
such place. A few lichen had sunk their root anchors into the hard
glassy crust, yet no trees or shrubs of any kind had managed to take
seed amid the rocks. The wind would have their heads off in an
instant.

Wrapped in blankets spun of the softest
goat's hair, Veys endured the wind now. Hood had wedged his strong,
fleshy body behind Veys' back, claiming the deepest refuge—the
crease directly beneath the overhang—for himself. Veys was
distressed by the man's nearness, repulsed by his own physical
reaction to the warm, respiring body next to his.

It did not occur to him to move. Here,
lying beneath a broken plate of slate, feigning sleep in the face of
a storm, he could watch both Marafice Eye and Asarhia March closely.

After taking his leave of the Dog Lord
yesterday evening, Marafice Eye had driven his party of eleven
through the night. A spare pony had been purchased in Ille Glaive to
carry Asarhia's drugged body back to Spire Vanis, yet the Knife had
chosen to ride with the girl himself. He was determined to make the
best time that he could. "Put the stench of clannish inbreeding
behind me." Veys was inclined to agree with him.

A storm thundering down from the north
had stopped their journey two leagues short of the pass. At first the
Knife had tried to ride with it, declaring that no clannish storm
could slow a brother-in-the-watch, yet when a hellish gust of wind
had ripped the saddlebags from his horse's rump, he'd had little
choice but to eat his words and call a halt.

Camp had been made in the deep rocky
draw between two opposing ledges of slate. Veys supposed it was the
best place to be found under the circumstances and had wasted no time
staking out his own claim beneath the narrowest and least desirable
ledge. He had assumed that no one would be willing to share space
with him, yet Hood had found it amusing to force himself into the
dark airless cavity at his back. "As long as I'm behind him and
he's not behind me, I reckon I'll be safe." Much laughter had
followed Hood's declaration, and Veys had felt his face heat in the
darkness. Thoughts of revenge had followed him to sleep.

Now it was dawn, and a red and weary
sun was rising in the east, and the sept that had found Hood so
amusing the night before was stirring with the increase in light.
Their leather cloaks were poor cover for a storm, and such lambskins
that had been hastily purchased in Ille Glaive were wet and stinking.
One sworn brother, a brawny giant with a slow eye, was melting a cake
of elk lard in a tin cup. The smell nauseated Veys.

Marafice Eye was awake. He had relieved
himself some distance from the campground and had now returned to his
place by the wool-and-alcohol fueled fire. He poked the fire with a
stick for a while, managing to coax some real heat from the flames,
before turning his attention to Asarhia March. The girl lay on the
bedroll next to his, covered by sheepskins and cloaks. Something
unpleasant happened to Marafice Eye's face as he beheld her, and Veys
thought it likely that he was considering the men he'd lost by the
Spill. The Knife was strange like that. My
men
, he called
his brothers-in-the-watch. Last night when the wind had dragged the
saddlebags from his warhorse, two red swords had clattered onto the
slate. Veys knew what they were in an instant: Crosshead's and
Malharic's swords. The Knife meant to carry them back to the forge,
heat them in that great black furnace, and return their steel to the
Watch. As if
that
could do Crosshead and Malharic any good.

Veys snorted softly as he watched
Asarhia March's face for signs of waking. The poppy blood the girl
had been given last night in the Ganmiddich roundhouse was a strong
agent of sleep. Veys had distilled it himself, turning liquid that
was normally thinner than water into something that poured as slowly
as cream. It was more potent than the Dog Lord knew, a fact that Veys
congratulated himself on later when he found his saddlebags had been
rifled and his supply of henbane seeds, so carefully concealed within
the handle of his cane-and-leather horsewhip, gone.

The Dog Lord had thought to protect the
girl on her journey home.

Veys smiled, allowing icy drops of rain
to tap against his teeth. The small quantity of poppy blood he had on
him—barely enough liquid to sauce a lamb chop—was more
than enough to render Asarhia March senseless all the way to the
obsidian deserts of the Far South.

The smile on Veys' face shrank as he
noticed Asarhia March's gloved hand fall free of the sheepskin. Did
the fingers contract?

Marafice Eye was oblivious of the
movement. He was busy working on the girl's chest, whipping bodice
strings through eyelets and pushing back the collar of her dress. His
mouth was pulled tight like a sphincter muscle. The sworn brother
heating the elk cake turned to watch.

Veys reached down beneath his blankets,
questing for the vial of poppy blood. Even as his physical self was
bent on the task, he probed out toward Asarhia with his mind. If she
was waking, he needed to know. Normally a girl her age and size could
be expected to sleep until noon on the dose of poppy blood she'd been
given. Yet the more Veys learned of the Surlord's almost-daughter,
the more he realized there was little normal about her.

Cold air buffeted his thoughts as he
pushed his mind against her skin. Quickly in and quickly out, he
cautioned himself, fear rising within his spine like cold water. A
gasp exploded from his lips as he entered Asarhia's body and ran with
her blood. Her chest cavity was riddled with opposing forces. Hard
strands of sorcery were coiled about her organs like snakes made of
glass. Wards, Veys realized, subtle ones cast by a master. Pushing
from the outside in, they exerted control over her liver, lungs, and
heart.