A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) (46 page)

“Not a Scarpe amongst them.”

Raina turned her head sharply as Angus spoke. She had almost forgotten he was beside her. Why had he come? Tem was dead, Raif and Effie were gone, and Drey had been sent south to Ganmiddich. The ranger had no kin left here. So why make Blackhail business his own?

“What’s it to you who’s down here, Angus Lok?” she challenged him. “Last I heard, you live in a city, not a clan.”

The ranger stopped to look at her. His face was deeply tanned and lined, and the blood vessels in his eyes were feathered with fatigue. He was a fine-looking man, she had always thought so, but she did not envy his wife. Angus Lok reminded her of a treader fly, one of those spindly brown insects that settled on the surface of the stew ponds around Dregg. You wondered how they could stand on water, until you looked very closely and saw their legs: ten times as long as their bodies, thinner than threads of silk, probing wide in all directions, their tiny hairs bristling in response to the slightest change in current.

What change in current had brought him here? Raina wondered.
I must be cautious
, she counseled herself,
speak little and listen much.

Angus watched her a moment longer—his copper eyes taking in such depth of detail that she had to suppress the urge to smooth back her hair and straighten her dress—before turning his attention to the campground.

“What’s it to me if tied Hailsmen raise their tents belowground, whilst sworn Scarpemen sit in the comfort of stone chambers above? You know what it is, Raina Blackhail. It’s imbalance. Even a Hailsman without oath should be given precedence over an outsider in his home clan.”

She could not disagree with him. She thought the same thing every day, when she came across Scarpe women using the dyeing vats to blacken their husbands’ fronts, Scarpe children sneaking into the cold stores to raid the apple barrels, and Scarpe men eyeing her with insolence whenever she entered the Great Hearth. She said, “And is that why you’re here, Angus, to address that imbalance?”

He smiled at her then, a genuine showing of warmth mellowed by weariness. “Come now, Raina. When a man asks you to dance do you stride into the middle of the floor and place his hands upon you? Or do you at least allow him the pleasure of leading you forward? We’re sensitive fellows, we men, and though we know very well we’re not in charge of much we like it when you pretend that we are.”

Raina had to smile. He’d pinned her precisely. She was mistaking defensiveness for caution. Spreading her arm before her, she invited him to walk a circuit of the fold. Angus Lok was a man who liked to be courted, and at one time long she had been good at courting. Dagro used to tease her about it, but Dagro was gone now. And she could barely remember the woman she used to be. With an effort, she put her smile into her voice and inquired about his wife.

“Darra.” Need darkened his eyes for an instant and then he blinked and it was gone. “She’s well, I hope. I haven’t been home since midwinter. I’ve been, as they say, unavoidably detained. The Dog Lord took a fancy to me and decided to keep me in his cellars along with his favorite malt and cheese. I wouldna have minded normally, but the cheese tasted like foot fungus and the malt ran out after a week.”

So the rumors were true: the Bludd chief had held the ranger prisoner. “Longhead says the weather will break any day now. You should head home while you can.”

Angus shook his head. “Not to be. I’ve fallen a wee bit behind in my affairs.”

Raina knew better than to ask what those affairs were. Angus Lok would doubtless give a charming answer that hid more than it revealed.
Play his game
, she reminded herself.
We’re two old friends chewing the cud
. “How did you find the clanholds on your journey west?”

“Troubled. Gnash is slaughtering its breeding stock, and the black rot has spoiled the grain stores at Dregg.”

“You’ve been at Dregg?”

“Ten days back. They were burning the meal on the court; great hills of it, giving off the blackest smoke. Xander had to mount a guard to stop the tied clansmen from rioting.”

Raina kept her face impassive; she was getting good at that, she’d noticed. “Does Xander expect more trouble?”

“Don’t all the chiefs?”

Hope was like breath, she thought: when it left your body it made you slump. Dregg was her birth clan; its future was part of her own. When her work and duties at Blackhail were done, when she was an old widow with wispy hair and no teeth, she’d pay one of the tied clansmen to take her to the Dregghold in a cart. She’d be an elder at Dregg, cousin to the chief, and the clan maids would rush to bring her hot apple possets and the inner loins of meat. Someone would offer a shawl for her shoulders, spun with as much air as wool. And she’d sit in the finest painted hall in the clanholds and watch the young ones dance.

“Here, chief’s wife. Wet your lips with this.”

Raina turned her head to see a tiny, hard-faced clanwife holding out a horn of ale. The woman had the look of the wild clan from Blackhail’s far west, and Raina did not know her by sight or name. Still, she took the cup and drank. A chief’s wife learned early never to refuse humble courtesies—you could never be sure when an insult might be taken. The ale was mead thinned with pond water and tasted brackish and flat, but she finished it down to the skim. The clanwife watched her swallow, and when Raina offered back the cup she shook her head.

“Nay. Keep it, chief’s wife. Give it to your husband—save him seizing it for hisself.”

The thin voice carried far across the stone vault, and dozens of heads turned toward it. The woman straightened her spine, waiting until silence had passed from man to man, then spat at Raina’s feet. With a hard, satisfied nod of her jaw, she turned to make her way back to her camp. Small dark-skinned men, her sons by the look of them, made space for her around the fire.

Raina felt the blood rise to her face. Spittle trickled from her skirt hem to her boot, and she scraped it away awkwardly against the floor.

“Here,” Angus said quietly, holding his hand toward the cup. “Let me take that from you.”

Raina shook her head with a snap. “Nay, Angus Lok. It is my clan and my cup, and I’ll keep it as she said.” Her fingers trembled as she threaded a silver hook through the horn cup’s rimhole and hooked it onto her belt. When the task was done she took a deep breath and raised her head. Every tied clansman in the fold was watching her, and her instinct was to hunker down and flee. There were currents here she didn’t fully understand. But she was wife to two chiefs, first woman in the clan, and she could live with much worse than hostile stares.

“Angus,” she said a little too loudly. “Let me show you the north wall. The builders of the fold set a block of moonstone into the masonry and carved their kin marks upon it. The sandstone blocks are strong, but their faces quickly wear, and the builders wanted to be sure to name themselves for posterity.”

Angus was all attention. “Indeed,” he said, as if he’d just learned the most interesting fact in all the clanholds. “Lead on.”

She heard him fall into place behind her, and thanked him silently for his understanding. Holding her shoulders square and looking directly ahead, she crossed the length of the fold, defying the tied clansmen to find fault.

The moonstone glowed in the darkness like a ghost trapped in the wall. Raina reached out to touch it, aware that the noise level was slowly returning to normal. She and Angus were alone here, separated from the open space of the great hall by a bloodwood stang as wide as a smoke tower. Angus made a show of squinting to interpret the kin marks carved deep into the stone. Someone had once rubbed silver leaf into the carvings, and odd lines and curves reflected light. The ranger halted when his gaze fell upon the mark of the armed bear.

“Sevrance,” he said quietly. “Tem’s ancestors helped build this?”

Raina nodded. “The Sevrances are one of the oldest families in the clanholds. Ned Sevrance was a table bearer for Jamie Roy.”

Angus nodded with interest, though Raina would have bet coin on him having known that fact before. Making a tiny gesture to the fold behind her she said, “Do you know what all that was about?”

He continued studying the kin marks, keeping his face toward the wall. “I’m sure you heard that Mace sent outriders to the western farms a few months back, urging all tied clansmen to take shelter in the Hailhold. Well, it seems a few of the outriders were a wee bit overenthusiastic about their task. Let’s call them Scarpes. Not only did these ‘Scarpes’ claim Mace had ordered a full-scale evacuation to the hold, but they—how should I put it?—
aided
in the evacuation process. Took horses, livestock, belt buckles, sacks of grain—anything they could rope or heft. Told the poor farmers all goods would be returned to them at the Hailhold. Only nothing but carcasses and empty sacks were returned. Now there’s a rumor going around that the farms themselves are being overrun, and that Scarpes are moving into the empty crofts and settling down for spring.”

“Does Mace know about this?”

Angus turned to look at her. “What do you think?”

“He wouldn’t dare sanction it.”

“Aye. But knowing about something and choosing to look the other way is much the same in the end.”

Catching a spark of green in Angus’s coppery eyes, Raina wondered if this was the reason he’d brought her here.

He executed a kind of half bow in acknowledgment of the understanding dawning on her face. “Small things like dispossessed crofters have a nasty habit of bringing clans to their knees.”

He was right. Tied clansmen—farmers, woodsmen, traders, miners—might not swear to die for their clans, but they brought goods to the table in return for the defense of themselves and their families. It was a fact no warrior cared to admit, but a clan could survive longer without swords than scythes. Even so. It occurred to Raina that she shouldn’t have to listen to such wisdom from an outsider.

Pulling away from the wall she said, “Well, I’d best be off now. I’ll be sure to speak to my husband when you’re gone.”

Angus’s fingers snapped around her wrist. And she did not think, did not stop to wonder why the entire surface of her skin erupted into violently cold gooseflesh. She simply reacted. Twisting her arm against his grip, she pulled down with enough force to send the ranger stumbling forward. As her trapped hand broke free, the other came up to strike him. Angus righted himself in an instant, but he was not quick enough to stop her open hand from striking his face. The impact made a dry crack, stinging Raina’s palm and raising an immediate welt on Angus’s jaw. His gaze jumped to her face, and he did not retaliate, did not move at all.

Raina let her hand fall awkwardly to her waist. Her heart was racing, and the gooseflesh on her arms and chest was so extreme that the entire surface of her skin felt tight. An image came to her of a woman lying amid the sword ferns and blue gorse of the Oldwood. Raina could feel the snow melting beneath the woman’s buttocks, hear the ragged gasps of breath as the man above her held down her wrists and thrust her legs apart with his knee . . .

“Raina. Raina?”

Angus’s voice was gently questioning. She knew she should respond to it,
wanted
to respond, but there was the woman in the Oldwood. Hurting. Alone.

After a time she heard her voice say, “Angus. Forgive me. I don’t know what came over me.”

The ranger tapped his jaw lightly. “What, this? Was nothing. My own wife warned me about my tongue. Angus, she said, when you attack a woman’s good name always be sure to duck.”

Raina nodded stiffly. She was aware that Angus was speaking loudly for a reason, and that many ears were listening to what he said, but she couldn’t find the strength to play his game.

She wanted to run away.

“Here.” A rabbit-fur-covered flask was pressed into her hand. “Drink deep.”

She did as she was told, filling her mouth with sweet scalding alcohol so pure it barely registered as fluid at all. When the liquor hit her brain it made the woman in the Oldwood recede into the distance, and she was finally free to think. Sweat drenched her back and buttocks, cold as melted snow.

“Let’s go,” Raina murmured, making for the stairs. She’d thought the past was behind her—had
forced
it behind her—so why had it all come flooding back? A strange, high sound left her lips as she ran from the fold.
Gods, don’t let it ruin me now.

She found herself in the great stone dome of the entrance hall, possessing no memory of climbing the many ramps and stairs that rose toward ground level. Angus was close behind, flanking her. Biddie Byce rushed by, a basket of winter-grown carrots pressed against her chest. A group of new-sworn yearmen, Perches and Murdocks and Lyes, were sitting against the stair wall, disassembling their gear belts and scabbards for cleaning. When they spotted their chief’s wife they slowed their labors to watch her. Raina ignored them. Her gaze fell on the iron-banded clan door, and she had to fight the urge to run outside. She wanted desperately to be alone.

“Angus Lok.”

Mace.
She didn’t need to turn toward the stair that led down to the chief’s chamber to know who stood upon it.

“Wife.”

He made her turn anyway, for he would not be ignored in front of clan. Mace Blackhail was dressed in an elk-suede tunic dyed black, collared with a heavy mantle of ice-wolf fur that still had the tail and leg sheaths attached. His beard and moustache had been newly trimmed, shaved narrow to match the long planes of his face. Climbing the last remaining steps to the entrance hall, he addressed himself to the ranger. “My scouts informed me you entered the Hailhold two nights back—yet you did not see fit to present yourself at my hearth?”

Angus stood his ground behind Raina, his face bland. “Aye, well, Hail Lord, if I’d have known you had a hankering to see me wild pigs couldna have kept me away.”

Mace’s mouth tightened. He suspected he was being made light of, and Raina knew he could not allow that in such a public place as the entrance hall. “Ranger. Enter my clanhold one more time without my knowledge and be forewarned to watch your back. Blackhail is at war, and any intruder on my soil must be judged enemy rather than friend.”