A Cavern of Black Ice (98 page)

Raif carried the two fox carcasses
slung over his back. They were gutted but not skinned and were now
freezing rapidly in the cold dry air. He would have liked to strap
them to Mule Ears' cantle, but the old gelding had no liking for the
smell of fox.

Ash led the horse by its reins. Uneven
snow cover made riding difficult, and she had chosen to walk instead.
Raif did not like the look of the dark patches beneath her eyes and
the yellowish cast to her skin. Gradually he was leading her to the
taiga's southwestern edge, where settled snow would make riding
easier.

He suspected that they might already be
in the Scarpehold, yet any markers that might have proclaimed that
fact were buried deep beneath the white. Bannen and Scarpe were close
neighbors, though there was little love lost between the two. Scarpe
was sworn to Blackhail, yet its oath did not prevent it from
encroaching on Blackhail's southern reach. Its chief was Yelma
Scarpe, and in the ten years she had led the clan she had annexed
land from Bannen and Dregg and taken control of an escarpment that
Clan Orrl had held for eight decades and was a prime site for hunting
and spotting wild sheep. The Scarpe badge was a black weasel with a
mouse in its jaws. The Scarpe boast was,
Our words cut as sharply
as our swords
. Yelma Scarpe had fought no battles with Bannen,
Dregg, and Orrl. No. She had simply
talked
them out of their
land.

And now one of her clan was Blackhail's
chief.

Raif almost smiled. Inside his mitts,
skin split as he bunched his hands into fists.

"Look!" Ash said, pointing to
the northwest sky above the treetops. "Smoke."

Raif followed her gaze. Smoke, greasy
and thick with burned matter, billowed up in great clouds several
leagues north of their position. The Scarpehouse. It had to be.
Scarpe's roundhouse was situated close to the Bannen border, on a
greenstone bluff surrounded by a moat of poison pines.

Unease cooled Raif's face. Who would
attack Scarpe? Bludd had pushed no farther west than Ganmiddich, and
now they were in retreat. Blackhail would not attack one of its own
war-sworn clans, most especially when that clan was birthplace to the
Hail Wolf. Was it Bannen or Gnash, then? Or dispossessed Ganmiddich?
Or was it dispossessed Dhoone?

None of the possibilities were good.
Any one of them meant an escalation in the Clan Wars. And for someone
to attack a clan sworn to Blackhail meant Blackhail itself must
respond.

"Raif! Stop! Why are you heading
north?"

Raif had to glance over his shoulder to
see Ash. She was many paces below him, on the trail they had been
walking since dawn. He stared at his own footprints in the snow,
following their course as they cleaved north away from the path. He
shook himself hard.
What am I doing? The torching of the
Scarpehouse means nothing to me
. Angry at himself, he headed
down the slope and back onto the trail.

He set a grim pace after that. They
emerged from the taiga at noon and traveled west along the frost
fields north of the river. To the south, the rocky balds and
escarpments that formed the tail end of the Bitter Hills cast dark,
shifting shadows upon the water. The Iron Caves lay somewhere beneath
them, excavated by Mordrag Blackhail, the Mole Chief, and seized by
the Forsworn some hundred years later when all the iron seams had
been mined out. According to Tern, the walls of the Iron Caves were
black and sparkling, and no man could carry a knife there for fear of
it flying from his hand. The Forsworn claimed the caves as a holy
place. They believed the One True God had slept there the night after
he Remade the World. It took Aran Blackhail, Mordrag's grandson,
twenty years to drive them out.

Directly ahead the pale blue peaks of
the Coastal Ranges rode the western horizon like ships made of ice.
Raif found himself staring at them for much of the day. It was easier
to look forward than back.

From time to time they passed bits of
freestanding wall, broken arches, and blocks of stone. Ruins. And
they had stood in the clanholds longer than any roundhouse. Raif had
seen such things on the Hailhold, made of the same milky blue stone
that always felt cool to the touch, even on the hottest day. Tem had
said that in the great white forests of Dhoone and Bludd whole cities
stood buried beneath the snow. Clan Castlemilk was rumored to have
taken its name from one such place.

Raif farmed the landscape as he walked,
searching the grassbeds and shrub groves for bearberries frozen on
the vine, rosehips, field mint, and the little wood ear mushrooms
that grew on rotting logs. They had meat, but foxes were musty on the
tongue, and Raif didn't much like the thought of eating them on their
own. Once or twice he spotted a glossy white ptarmigan hiding in the
snow, yet he left the birds undisturbed. Ash knew he could kill game
with a rock, she
knew
, but it didn't mean he wanted her to
see him do it.

When they came upon a grove of old
willows, Raif called a halt while he cut himself a staff. The knife
he'd taken from the Ganmid-dich farmhouse was little use against the
hard, finely grained wood, and it took many long minutes of sawing
and twisting to cut a branch free. Ash, who had been riding since
they'd broken free of the taiga, did not dismount as he stripped the
stave of side suckers. She slouched in the saddle, her chin almost
touching her chest. When she noticed Raif looking at her, she
straightened her spine and made an effort to smile. Raif could not
smile back. He was remembering what Heritas Cant had said about her,
about how the power within her would press against her organs until
they leaked.

Perhaps she read the thoughts on his
face, for she said, "I'm fine. Just a bit tired, that's all."

"And the voices?"

"I fight them." Her clear
gray eyes met his, and Raif suddenly wished the voices were real men
he could fight and kill, not shadowy nothings he could not see.

"You need to eat," he said
after a while. "Here. Take these." He handed her a stem of
frozen bearberries and a few of the rosehips he had collected. All
clansmen who rode to the badlands for a season's hunting carried a
pouch of dried rosehips in their packs. The hard pink fruits stopped
the shaking sickness from coming, even when there were no fresh
greens to eat.

Ash grimaced as she bit into one of the
buds.

"You'll get used to them quicker
than fox meat," he promised. The smile she gave him warmed
something deep and very cold inside his chest. "Let's get going.
There's still an hour of daylight left."

That night they camped in the lee of a
hill, digging a burrow into old drifted snow. Raif hunted while Ash
slept, bagging an ice hare he flushed from its den and a fat white
ptarmigan who burst into flight when Raif stumbled upon its roost.
Feeling pleased with his prizes, he returned to the dugout with plans
for a midnight roast. The fox supper he'd prepared by boiling the
dark, purplish meat in snowmelt had not been a great success.

He sensed something was wrong when he
topped the hill. The night seemed suddenly dark and small, as if it
had shrunk to half its size. The dugout looked the same as when he'd
left it, and the fire was burning as well as an unattended fire
could, yet something had changed. The air was colder. A nearby grove
of aspens rustled and clicked as a gust of wind drove their trunks
together like wooden sticks. Suddenly the night's kills felt like
ghost weight against Raif'sback, and he let them drop to the snow.

Clutching the cold ivory of his raven
lore, he raced the short distance to the dugout. The snow surrounding
the entrance was clean except for his own footprints, yet even though
no man or animal had entered the shelter he knew Ash was gone. Her
body lay on the mat of willow switches he had spread to protect her
from the cold. Muscles in her shoulders and upper arms were
convulsing, causing her body to buck against the dugout's floor. Her
mouth was open, and something dark and tarlike moved within it.
Oh,
gods
.

Raif squeezed his lore. An instinct he
wasn't prepared for made him want to run. He could smell the power
inside her the way a dog smelled disease. Heritas Cant was right: It
was something that wasn't meant to be.

Kill an army for me, Raif Sevrance.

Raif shook his head, alarmed at how
quickly the thought of killing her entered his mind.
It would be
a mercy
, a small voice said.
The world would thank you for
it in the end
.

"No." Raif spoke the word out
loud. He had no brother, no clan, and no memories stored in stone.
But he had Ash, and he had sworn to protect her. And who was he to
judge the value of another's life?

Thinking of Angus, imagining what he
would do if he were here in the river valley west of Scarpe, Raif
stripped off his gloves and knelt by Ash's side. Angus had thrust a
wad of wool in her mouth whenever she began to draw sorcery, so
that's what
he
would do. Swiftly Raif cut a handful of wool
from Ash's cloak and packed it in his fist. He tried to be gentle as
he pushed the wad of fabric into her mouth, but his hands shook, and
the desire to be rid of the dark thing on her tongue made him thrust
the gag deep into her throat. Her stomach sucked into a hollow the
moment the gag was in place, and he laid a hand on her rib cage and
pushed hard to counter the reflex action to vomit. Despite the
coldness of the dugout, droplets of sweat rose like blisters on
Raif's face.

Ash's legs jerked. Cords of muscle in
her neck rose as she fought the muzzle. Raif held her down, hard as
he could, until her muscles fell slack under his hands. He stayed
pressing her long after, his breaths ragged and his heart hammering
against his ribs. Finally he released his grip, but only so he could
tear the foxhides into strips to bind her. There was a taste in his
mouth that might have been fear. He kept seeing the rippling
blackness of the thing upon her tongue… the way it shifted and
ran like liquid metal. He was not gentle as he bound her.

Later, when he sat at the entrance to
the dugout, turning the fire over with the tip of his willow staff,
he wondered what would have happened if he had not returned when he
had. Ash was silent now, her arms resting easy in their sheathing of
blankets and rope. A Reach, Cant had named her. Yet Raif did not know
what that meant. He had heard Cant's words, yet they seemed like
shadowy things, concealing more than they showed.

Raif put down the staff and held his
hands above the flames to warm them. He tried to send his mind
elsewhere, to the ice hare and ptarmigan that were lying unclaimed in
the snow, to the dwindling stock of firewood, to clothes that needed
airing, yet he made no move to start any of those tasks. Better that
he stay here and watch over Ash.

Time passed and the fire burned low,
sending little red flames to eat the insides of logs. Raif thought he
would not sleep. The pain in his ribs ran deeper tonight than any
other night, and his hands ached and wept. Still, his eyes closed and
his thoughts stopped coming and he slipped into a deep, dreamless
sleep.

He awoke in darkness hours later, sore
all over but strangely well rested. Before he stepped outside to
relieve himself or feed the fire, he cut the lashings that held Ash's
arms to her side. The gag was drenched with saliva, and he had to
force her teeth apart to pull out the expanded wool.

She opened her eyes as he removed his
hand from her jaw.

Raif slid the gag behind his back.

Ash lifted her right arm and rubbed the
section where the ties had dug deep. "How long?"

"Overnight. Just overnight."

She looked away from him. He thought he
saw her lip tremble, but a fraction of a moment later it was still.

He helped her to sit up. Already he was
counting days. Another two to reach the Storm Margin. A week to reach
the base of Mount Flood. "How are you feeling?"

'Tired. My arms are aching." She
made a face. "And something tastes bad in my mouth."

"I'll fetch some water."

"Raif."

He turned to look at her.

'Do you think we'll make it? I was
lucky this time… I woke." She shook her head softly, her
eyes darkening as memories filled them. "They're so hard to
fight. They're stronger now. That day at the pass changed them. They
came so close to breaking through they could taste it."

Raif didn't know how to reply. Ash
needed to be told that she would make it to the Cavern of Black
Ice alive and well. Yet Tern had not taught him how to lie. In
the end he said, "I will slaughter the horse for blood and meat,
carry you on my back, and walk until my feet turn yellow with ice
before I give up or turn back."

He bowed his head and walked outside to
a frost so hard, each breath stung like acid in his throat.

They left the dugout while it was still
dark. If there had been a moon, it had long set, yet the ground snow
glimmered blue and gray as if light from some distant source shone
upon it. On Raif's insistence Ash rode the gelding at a trot. Raif
ran for short bursts to keep pace. Often he fell behind, as his
mending ribs would allow him to take only so much air. When the sun
rose in a brilliant blue sky, the granite peaks of the Coastal Ranges
seemed close enough to touch. The winter sun made Raif nervous,
especially when he saw Ash tugging at the collar of her cloak as if
she were warm and needed air. It
wasn't
warm. It was cold
enough to freeze tears. And there were men and women in Clan
Blackhail who could tell you all about the danger of believing that
sunshine
meant warmth. As many clan ears had been lost
beneath a blue sky as in the deepest, darkest night.

Raif monitored his own body closely.
His hands ached constantly… but at least they weren't numb.
"It's when you
can't
feel them there's a problem,"
Tern would always say, "not when you can."