A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) (23 page)

Raif was not aware of drawing his sword. It was just there, in his fist, its blade running silver in the starlight. Ahead, the trail widened into a makeshift path, and there were signs of men and horses upon it: a thrown hoof-iron, a mound of frozen dung, a piece of trail meat crooked like a finger. Raif suddenly wished he wasn’t so tired. Weeks of hard travel had taken their toll, and it seemed as if his thoughts and his reflexes were moving a beat too slow. He thought he smelled something, a coldness filled with potential, like air charging before a storm.

The edge of a building loomed ahead. As he drew closer, Raif made out the eerily pale form of a palisade raised from timber and then sprayed with water to form a protective wall of ice. He’d seen such winter-built strongwalls in the city holds, and admired their simplicity—the ice repelled fire and rendered the wall almost unscalable—yet he had never known clan to build one.

Abruptly, the path rose, and he saw what lay beyond the palisade. A rock-and-timber redoubt, square-shaped with a roof of hammered logs and the rough beginnings of a battlement ringing its northern wall. No light showed through the narrow, defensive windows. A lone shutter had come loose from its mooring, and it creaked back and forth on rusted hinges. Raif smelled old fires and cook oil. And then he saw the first body, lying facedown in a trench where there was a gap in the palisade to make space for a gate.

Fear dried Raif’s mouth. Cautiously he approached the body. Already he could see the man was well-armored, in a backplate of painted steel. Some design had been beautifully worked in purple and gold. An eye. And then suddenly Raif realized what he was looking at: a Forsworn knight, with the Eye of God upon him.

The man had been slain in a single thrust, run through with such force and such an edge that both breastplate and backplate had cracked open. Turning the body over Raif saw where the jagged edges of the punctured breastplate had been driven deep into the meat of the knight’s heart. He had never seen such an entry wound before, not even that day . . . that day in the badlands with Tem. The flesh was black and seared, as if it had been cooked, and something dark oozed from the wounds.

Raif turned away. He thought he might be sick. The purge fluid stank of the same alien odor he’d smelled earlier. The knight had been lying facedown, and yet fluid had not drained off. It hung in his mouth like smoke. Instinctively, Raif reached to touch the tine at his waist . . . and felt emptiness instead. He would give his sword to have it now, the comfort of gods and clan.

Traitors aren’t allowed to bear the stone.
Bitterness welled up in him, and he was glad because it shrank his fear.

Even without a measure of powdered guidestone, Raif knew he could not leave the dead man before him unblessed. The corpse belonged to a Forsworn knight, and so was an enemy to clan and clannish gods, but he had died alone and untended. Like Tem. Closing his eyes and touching both lids, Raif murmured, “May your god take your soul and keep it near him always.”

It was all he could do. Bending low, he tugged at the knight’s purple cloak, freeing it from beneath the man’s shoulders and covering the face. The knight’s eyes were open and the irises had rolled back in his head, showing nothing but white. It was a relief not to look at them any longer.

Straightening, Raif inspected the gate. Unstripped logs, tarred and bound, mounted on an X-shaped frame. The outpost had not been established long. Everything about it had the look of something hastily erected. No clansman would raise a defensive structure with raw timber. So why had these knights?

Raif considered what he knew about the Forsworn. They were wealthy, it was said, with temples known as Shrineholds scattered throughout the North. They called themselves the Eye of God and made war against heretics in his name. The Listener said they made pilgrimage to the Lake of Lost Men, but Raif did not know why. He didn’t know much, he realized. Clan had few dealings with outsiders, and Blackhail had even fewer than most. Growing up clan meant learning little of other men.

Raif dropped his pack and walked through the gate into the narrow, packed-earth bailey beyond. His breath was doing strange things in his windpipe, hurting his back as he breathed. He felt like a child carrying a grown-up sword, and found he could not remember a single form Shor Gormalin had taught him.
The Listener was right; I need to learn how to use this. But not tonight. Gods, not tonight.

He almost passed the second body, so deep were the shadows that surrounded it. The redoubt had been built on a groundsill of rubble and timber to keep it raised above the frozen tundra and protected from sinkage during spring thaw. The first floor of the structure overhung the foundation pile, creating a trap for shadows and moss. This body lay in two pieces beneath the overhang, sheared through the gut so that only strings of sinew and intestines joined the two halves. Raif retched.
Be thankful for the shadows
, he told himself, spitting to clean his mouth.
Without them I’d see worse.

There was nothing to do but speak the same blessing over the dead knight and cover his face.

Slowly, Raif mounted the quartered-log stairs leading to the redoubt’s main door. Time and effort had been spent on the door: the timbers were dressed and sealed, the joints shod in lead. The Eye of God had been painted above the arch, and someone had even brought gold leaf to burnish the pupil so it looked as if God were gazing upon a golden field. Raif felt the Eye upon him as he put a hand to the door and pushed.

Darkness and stillness waited on the other side. The stench of accelerated rot and strangely charged air made him doubt that anyone within had been left alive. Seconds passed as he stood on the threshold, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the blackness. He appeared to be in a small defensive ward, fashioned with louvered floorwork to slow an enemy’s charge. One wrong step and a man’s foot would slip through the boards to the groundsill below, halting and trapping him, and possibly breaking his leg.
Who did they fear?

The Eye was here too, painted huge upon the walls. Only now it was not something watchful and benevolent, it was an angry eye, fearsome, shot with red veins. Raif found himself discomforted beneath it, and felt a pang of guilt at being so easily awed by a foreign god.

Carefully, mindful of his steps, he crossed the ward and entered the main chamber of the fort. The inner door had been torn from its hinges and two dead knights lay to either side of it, swords drawn and visors down: they’d had more warning than those outside. But it had not saved them. Beautifully worked scale armor made one man’s corpse glitter like a faceted jewel. He bore the spiked collar of a penitent, and all his metalwork had been greased with reddish-brown bone oil. The weapon that had killed him had struck so deeply that Raif could see the floorboards beneath his chest; they had been ripped up and splintered as the weapon was pulled free. Raif shuddered. What creature could break down a strongdoor and do this to a man? Bullhammer, the most powerful man Raif had ever known, had never torn the middle from an enemy in a single strike.

Raif spoke blessings to both men and moved on. The main hall of the redoubt made him sad, for he recognized the pain these knights had taken to honor their One God. The only local resources were timber and rock, and they had used both to raise a massive altar block that had been draped with cloth of purple. Here the Eye was not a crude wall-painting but a crystal set into an almond-shaped mounting of pure gold. Seeing it, Raif felt the sword move in his hand.
Of course, a knight’s blade.
The rock crystal surmounted on the pommel seemed to pulse in time with the Eye.

Light poured in from a window high in the hammer-vaulted roof as the moon rose overhead. Raif saw crudely carved chairs and box pallets, prayer mats woven from coltgrass, oak coffers lining the far wall, a rope ladder leading to the external battlements, and an ancient book laid open on a dragon-pine stand. They had not been here long, these men, and he could not understand what had brought them to this place.

More knights had fallen in the farthest reach of the hall, defending, it seemed to Raif, the small Eye-carved portal beyond. Seven men dead. Seven blessings given. All of the knights’ eyes were open and rolled back, and all had the same black fluids oozing from their skull cavities and wounds.

Breathing thinly, Raif made his way through the Eye portal and into the small chamber beyond. In the same way that the Hailstone was heart of clan, this chamber was the heart of the fort. Raif felt its power. The timber walls had been stained white, and in the center a font hewn from speckled granite held a pool of water in an eye-shaped bowl. Instinctively, Raif kept his gaze from alighting too long upon the water. Something told him he didn’t want to see his own face reflected there.

A soft noise made him start. Spinning, he raised his sword.

“Morgo?” came a weak murmur. “Is that you?”

Raif peered into the shadows in the corner behind the portal. Someone, a knight, lay fallen in a pool of blood. He saw immediately that the man was not dressed like the other knights, in fine armor and cloth of purple, but was unarmored and mantled in a cloak of skin. Dimly, Raif remembered that as the Forsworn rose through the ranks they cast more and more of their worldly possessions aside, until they were left with nothing more than their swords and what clothes they could stitch with their own hands. That meant this man lying before him was of a high order, possibly even the commander of the fort.

Raif dropped to his knees beside the knight. The man’s wounds were terrible to see. His left hand was gone and his left thigh had been laid open by a series of chopping blows. His skull had taken a slicing cut, and part of his right ear hung from a flap of skin. The same purge fluids that leaked from the other knights’ wounds leaked from his, mingling darkly with his blood. On his right side lay a sword not unlike Raif’s but of finer make, with a bluish crystal surmounted on the pommel. The sword’s edge was warped and blackened, as if it had been held to a flame and burned.

The knight’s face was gray. His lips were parched, and bits of skin flaked from them as he spoke. “Morgo?”

“Hush,” Raif said, not gently, stripping off his inner coat of seal fur and bundling it to form a pillow for the knight’s head. “I’ll bring water.”

“No,” murmured the knight, suddenly agitated. “Don’t leave me.”

He had once been powerful, Raif saw, with the lean muscle of one who fights rather than trains. He was not young, for there was much gray in his close-cropped hair, but his strength of will persisted. Gods alone knew how he still lived. Raif tore a strip from the soft rabbit fleece he wore next to his throat. Almost he did not know where to begin to tend this man, but he knew that he could not leave him like this.

The knight, seeing what Raif meant to do, waved him away. “No.” He paused for breath. “You cannot save me, not this way.”

Gray eyes dull with pain met Raif’s, and Raif found he could speak no lie. Silently, he let the rabbit strip fall to the floor. “What happened here?”

“Evil walked amongst us . . . broke down our door.”

“How many attacked?”

The knight’s eyes clouded. His fist clenched and unclenched. After a time he repeated, “Morgo?”

Raif folded his own fist around the knight’s, forcing his flesh to be still. Helplessness roughened his voice. He was clan, and every clansman knew what was owed to a fatally wounded man. “No. Not Morgo. A friend.”

“Then why do you have Morgo’s sword?”

Raif felt the world switch beneath him. He glanced at the sword Sadaluk had given him, resting now on the plank floor, well clear of the knight’s blood.

The knight’s gaze sharpened. “Tell me you did not kill him.”

“I did not.” Raif thought quickly. “Morgo lost his way on his journey to the Lake of Lost Men. The Ice Trappers found his body, and gave me his sword.” He had no idea how long the Listener had held the sword, but he’d imagined it lying in that foreign-made chest for decades. He asked, because he could not help himself, “Who is Morgo?”

The knight’s throat began working but words took long to come. “. . . took the Lost Trail. A boy . . . only fifteen. I told him to wait.
Wait
.”

Something in the knight’s voice made Raif say, “He was your brother.”

“Dead now, long dead.”

Forty years dead,
Raif guessed, feeling weary and suddenly old. “Rest now,” he murmured. “I’ll watch you.”

Time passed as the knight slept. Raif crouched by his body, thirsty and hungry but unwilling to move away. The font in the center of the room cast a shadow that circled the chamber as the night passed. Sometimes the water rippled and
plink
ed, though Raif could detect no breeze. The knight rested fitfully, jerking and shivering, each breath gurgling wetly in his throat. He awakened before dawn, and Raif could see the livid fever lines spreading up his neck.

“Only one,” the knight rasped. “A shadow that was not a shadow, bearing a sword as black as night.”

Raif felt his gooseflesh rise. The knight was answering his question from earlier, and the words of Heritas Cant sounded in his head.
They ride the earth every thousand years to claim more men for their armies. When a man or woman is touched by them they become Unmade. Not dead, never dead, but something different, cold and craving. The shadows enter them, snuffing the light from their eyes and the warmth from their hearts ... Blood and skin and bone is lost, changed into something the Sull call
maer dan:
shadowflesh.

Slowly Raif’s hand rose to his lore. When he looked up he saw the knight watching him.

“Take me,” he said. “Before the shadows can.”

Raif breathed and did not speak. Although he had not wanted to see it he knew that the purge fluids had collected in the knight’s wounds, sending tendrils of darkness smoking across his skin.
Oh gods. The other knights are lost.

But not this one, not yet. Raif found his strength and his voice. “Tell me one thing. Why did you build this place?”