A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) (69 page)

Quill’s eyebrows lifted, and a light of interest entered his cool gray eyes. “That’s a new one. So. If I understand you rightly you need to enter the fortress and rescue your master who is being held there?”

Crope nodded. He was relieved at how quickly Quill understood him.

“This lord of yours. Do you know if he’s been held below the Cask or under the quad?”

Puzzled Crope said, “Below the pointy tower, the white one.”

“The Splinter.” Quill considered this information for a moment. “Someone once told me there was a deep chasm beneath there that housed a chamber lined with iron—I took an ear from him for his perjury. Seems I may have been hasty.”

Crope nodded. Hasty he understood.

Quill leant forward. “I can’t help you gain entry to the Splinter—that’s been locked down and sealed shut for years—but I can help you get inside the fortress.”

“How?” Crope’s heart was beating very fast in anticipation of a grand scheme. In a way Quill reminded him of his lord; both were clever and capable men.

Yet when Quill spoke Crope was puzzled, not amazed, for Quill said very simply, “You’re going to walk right in.”

Crope listened as the thief explained.

THIRTY-FIVE

Harlequins

E
ffie was growing pretty accustomed to the wagon. It was beginning to feel as if she’d lived here her whole life. Dregg had begun to seem like one of those places in bairns’ tales: somewhere you dreamed of but never got to go. And the thing was, she wasn’t sorry one bit. This life of camping and traveling and waiting for the men who should have picked up the gold half a month back had become her, Effie Sevrance’s life. She had things she was responsible for: feeding and brushing down the horses, warming the ale, cooking all food that didn’t involve meat—roasting game was Clewis Reed’s territory—keeping the wagonbed clean, doctoring any cuts or grazes, and sometimes even acting as lookout for the gold men.

Neither Clewis Reed nor Druss Ganlow had spent much time around children, Effie guessed, for they didn’t treat her like adults usually treated a child. She was given no special consideration, not fussed over at all, and that was something she’d grown very much to like. They barked orders at her in the exact same voices they used for each other. She was a member of the crew now.

As she scrubbed the black stuff from the base of the cooking pot, she checked on the positions of Clewis Reed and Druss Ganlow. Druss was doing man’s business behind a bush close to the river cliff—she could just see the top of his head—and Clewis was a quarter-league farther to the north, walking the tree line, keeping watch.

They’d been camping these past few days amongst the slate crags and fire pines of western Ganmiddich, holing up for the storm. The storm had been quite splendid, Effie decided. So much better when you were out in the middle of it, with only the tree canopies and a stretch of canvas to cover you, than in a roundhouse, all protected by stone. She’d been scared at first, but the inside of the wagon was so snug, like a cave, that it had already started to feel like home, and after a while the fear had slipped away of its own accord. As long as she was inside nothing could hurt her.

Lightning had brought down a tree. The shell was still smoking beyond the tree line, sending up a line of black smoke that rose vertically in the calm air. Even though the storm had passed two days earlier, Druss and Clewis had so far judged the going too soft for the wagon. Even now, runoff was still spilling down toward the river, the water stained brown with tannin from the trees.

The river itself was moving swift and high, its waters the color of mud. Somewhere upstream a saturated bank must have collapsed, for huge chunks of earth and whole trees complete with root balls sped by from time to time. The river made Druss and Clewis frown: it was the cause of all their problems and the reason they had to wait here in the borderlands, unable to return home.

Effie had learned the truth of everything pretty soon after she’d discovered the gold. Druss Ganlow had been against telling her at first, but Clewis had pointed out in his slow, rational way that now Effie had seen the gold with her own two eyes they could either murder or enlighten her. And since he, Clewis Reed, could not allow the murdering of a child in circumstances such as these, that meant they might as well tell Effie enough to ease her mind.

Druss Ganlow hadn’t liked this one bit. After inventing several new combinations of curse words, he had made Effie swear a dire oath.
I will not mention the gold to any other person, alive or dead, even if tortured with blades and hot coals, and I vow to take this knowledge to my grave. I do swear this on the lives of Drey and Raina, and the souls of Mother and Da
. He had even taken a spoonful of her blood.

The gold, it turned out, had been mined from Blackhail’s own Black Hole. Two years earlier the miners had been reworking one of the oldest seams, a full league beneath the balds, at the head of a tunnel called Dark Maiden. For weeks they had been finding crystals of yellow metal fused to the silver in the wall of quartz they were breaking. They were just flakes at first, a scattering of specks, but then the Lode Master ordered a collapse. When the miners reentered Dark Maiden after the water blast they thought they’d stepped into another world. Gold, a reef of it three feet wide, stippled the newly exposed quartz.

The Lode Master had called a meeting. The miners were already operating a stone mill and a furnace without Blackhail’s knowledge, and it was a simple thing for them to refine the gold. Clan need never know. As Druss Ganlow had already been in business with the miners, carting contraband silver south to the city holds, he was the man they called upon to turn the excess gold into goods.

Two years later and the reef had still not run its course. All the tied miners had stashes of gold. A few had drifted south to spend it, but most simply hoarded it in cache holes in the shanty. The miners were cautious men, Clewis said, and their faces showed something close to relief whenever he and Druss turned up to unburden them of the newly poured rods.

Druss and Clewis were due back there in twelve days, but it did not look as if they would make it. The city traders who took the gold from them in return for goods and money on account in Ille Glaive had failed to make the appointed meeting, and now Druss and Clewis were stuck. The gold men had not come, and there was little to do but wait and see.

The Wolf River had been running high for fifteen days. Just when it had looked set to fall the storm had hit, and now it was high again. None of the river crossings were open, and the barges were all beached. Bannen’s Bridge of Boats, which Effie had learned to her disappointment was little more than a collection of skiffs and punts roped into a line with boards run across them, had not been afloat in a month. The gold men had been unable to make the crossing into the clanholds.

It was all very worrying. Clewis Reed insisted they moved camp every few days for caution’s sake, for a wagon bearing nine stone of gold was a sitting duck.

When Effie had first heard Druss mention the weight she had been impressed. Anwyn Bird had weighed Effie last year on her meat scales and had pronounced her just over four stone. That meant there was enough gold in the wagon to make two of her. She’d been disappointed when she’d finally seen it laid out. Just twenty-four rods the thickness of tapered candles and half their length. That was all the gold it took to make two Effie Sevrances.

The other things in the baskets were just lading. There was some raw ore, its lode of silver still entombed in chunks of quartz, a few sacks of powdered antimony used for making hell-fire, and a dozen bars of lead. These were mostly diversions, Clewis said. They gave the gold something to hide behind.

Done with scrubbing the breakfast pot, Effie stood. Her knees had gotten stiff after being so long on the damp earth and they made noises like cracked knuckles as they locked into place. Druss was done with his man’s business and was now poking the ground with a long stick. Every so often he would squint downriver and then look up at the sky. The day seemed fine to Effie: the grasses and ferns freshly scrubbed by the storm, the sky covered by the kind of high clouds that seldom meant rain, and the grounded ducks clashing noisily. Only the harlequins entered the water. The berserkers of the river birds.

After a time Druss appeared to reach a decision and headed back toward the wagon. Effie heard him give a high-pitched whistle to summon Clewis from the trees.

Quickly, she gathered up the breakfast things and the ground tarp and hauled them to the back of the wagon. Then she returned and set her attention to the fire. Should she put it out or shouldn’t she? Would they be traveling downriver or staying put?

Druss told her nothing, but it didn’t look good. Fresh mud had splashed over the crown of his boots. “Fed the horses their mash yet?” he snapped.

She nodded. No one was going to catch Effie Sevrance not doing her fair share.

“And the scrape on Boe’s heel?”

“Done.” It had been a keen disappointment to learn that the two matched ponies who pulled the cart weren’t named Killer and Outlaw after all, but rather Jigger and Boe.

Druss Ganlow grunted. He tried to think of some other way to catch her slacking, but couldn’t come up with one, and settled on grunting some more. The damp air had turned his hair into pale wisps, and he reminded Effie of a plump and disgruntled baby. His skin was smooth and he had fat-apple cheeks, and if it hadn’t been for his sharp green eyes his expression might have been jovial. He hailed Clewis as the Orrlsman approached, and walked forward a few paces to meet him.

“Any trouble?” he asked.

Clewis Reed shook his head. He had his green antler bow in his fist and was wearing the long, narrow Orrl cloak that somehow drew its color from the sky and surrounding landscape. Today it looked a sort of pale dove-gray. Which was funny, because when Effie’d first seen it in Blackhail she could have sworn it was almost white. He said, “Are we off, then?”

“Mud’s bad. The rain flushed out the last of the snow.”

“We’ve been here four days. That’s too long, especially with a fire burning to mark our place.”

Druss nodded reluctantly. He always deferred to the Orrlsman on matters of safety. “We’ll give it a go. See how the road lies.”

Effie found her hand had gone to her lore as the men spoke. The little chunk of granite had shifted against her chest. It didn’t feel like a bad thing, not a warning exactly, more an affirmation of what Clewis said. Best to be on the road. Away. Quickly she looked at the stand of fire pines that marked the forest border, knowing as she did so that a man more experienced than her had just been doing the very same thing and had pronounced it safe. She saw nothing, and forced her mind to other things. The fire needed to be snuffed.

They worked as a team to get the wagon ready and the horses hitched. When Effie had completed her tasks she found she had a few spare minutes outside while Druss secured the load and Clewis Reed stretched a line of damp arrows beneath the canvas to dry. Careful not to stray too far from the wagon, she circled the perimeter of the camp, kicking up mud, squashing down hot ashes and horsepats: concealing signs of their occupation. It was just a precaution, she told herself. Nothing more.

When the wagon finally shuddered into motion an entire flock of wood ducks took off in fright. Watching them through the canvas flap, Effie took their flight as a sign. You knew you’d been somewhere too long when the ducks had mistaken your wagon for a landmark and were shocked when it started to move.

The going was slow. Runoff had turned the road into mud. The wagon would lurch forward, rock to a halt as the mud sucked at the wheels, roll back a bit and then move forward once more as Druss cracked his whip.

Clewis had chosen to sit up front with Druss on the driver’s seat, his braced bow lying across both men’s laps. He was worried about his arrows, Effie could tell. In stormy weather the damp got into them no matter what you did to protect them, and a damp arrow had to be dried delicately. Clewis said it was better to shoot with a damp arrow than with one that had been warped by too much heat. Damp meant loss of power. Warped meant loss of accuracy. It wasn’t a hard choice. The bow was different, he explained: that was waxed and glazed.

Effie had thought about this for a moment, and then asked, “Why don’t you wax your arrow shafts, then?”

Clewis had looked at her for a very long time, his old dignified face perfectly still, and then had replied in a pondering voice, “Do you know, I don’t believe anyone’s thought of that before.”

Effie had been stupidly pleased. She grinned now, just thinking about it, letting her imagination spin out a life where she passed from swordsman to hammerman, from woodsman to stone mason, from pig farmer to head cook, making insightful observations on their crafts. Effie the Wise. Effie of the Keen Eye. Deep Horse-Sense Effie.
That
made her giggle out loud, and she had a picture of herself wearing a horse’s head and wandering from clan to clan. Perhaps Anwyn could make her one, once she told the clan matron how to vastly improve the texture of her bannock and brown buns.

Once she’d started giggling she couldn’t stop. Anwyn would kill her. The hammerman would kill her. She’d have to be Effie of the Fleet Foot before she even
thought
of being wise.

As she hugged her sore stomach, her lore jumped. It was such a deliberate movement, an actual moving away from her skin and then a dropping back, that it made a knocking sound as it hit her breastbone.

Effie felt her skin tighten all at once. She stood, and then was immediately thrown back into her seat by the wagon lurching to a halt. As she stood a second time she felt the wagon list as its front wheels sank deep into the mud.

“Clewis!” she cried. “
Clewis!
”

He turned to look at her through the break in the canvas behind the driver’s seat. “Everything’s fine, Effie. We’re just stuck in the mud.”