A Sword From Red Ice (45 page)

"Raif! Over here!"

Tracking the sound of his name, Raif spied the
big, powerful form of Stillborn wending his way through a group of
Maimed Women. The Rift brother was dressed in a sleeveless buckskin
tunic trimmed with rabbit fur. His bare forearms were wrapped in
matching bullhorns. Breaking free from the crowd, he brought Raif to
a halt by standing in front of him and enveloping him in a giant,
smothering bear hug.

"I told the Mole you killed that Hailsman on
your way out 'cause he challenged you for the gold," Stillborn
murmured insistently in Raif's ear while he gripped him. "And
that you told me you were off to take care of a spot of personal
business and that you'd be back within a month."

The two men separated, but Stillborn caught Raif's
forearms in his fists and held Raif at arm's length while he
inspected him. The Maimed Man's hazel eyes were knowing. The puckered
flesh that ran along his face and down his neck quivered with strong
emotion. "Know two things before this dance starts," he
said, his voice low and husky. "One: I am glad you are back. And
two: I am your man."

Raif breathed and did not think. Later, he told
himself. Aware that Stillborn was waiting upon a response, he forced
himself to nod. "It's good to see you, Still." he said,
knowing it was true only as he spoke.

It was little but Stillborn nodded, satisfied. He
was a man well-used to little. Releasing his hold on Raif's arms he
said, "I see you bent my sword."

Raif laughed. Of course, ownership of the Forsworn
sword had always been a fluid concept between them. When Raif had
first met the Maimed Man in the canyonlands, Stillborn had simply
taken the sword as his own. Weeks later, on that dark day in Black
Hole, Raif had taken it back. "I'd be grateful if you could lend
me another one until I can get it straightened."

Even before he'd finished the sentence, Stillborn
said, "Done."

"Azziah rin Raif! Well coddle my ravens' eggs
and serve them with vinegar. Who'd thought we'd see your fine,
handsome face again this side of damnation."

Yustaffa. The fat man with the swordbreaker danced
lightly around the firepile, his breast and belly rolls jiggling
beneath a fantastical outfit of yellow silk spotted with tufts of
horsehair and belted, priestlike, with golden rope. He was carrying
something in his chubby fist that he took care to hold level.

Raif did not greet him, but this only caused
Yustaffa further delight.

"Lost a little weight, I see," he said,
approaching. With a theatrical narrowing of his eyes he reversed
himself. "No. I am mistaken. You've gained a little something
upon the shoulders." For a moment the eyes were shrewd, and then
the veil of spite returned. "What, no kiss? And here was I
thinking you'd have missed me."

Some in the crowd tittered. One low-breasted hag
shouted, "Ask him where he's been."

Yustaffa threw his free hand in the air and issued
a big, showy shrug. "The people have spoken, and who am I to
ignore them?" And then for Raif's ears alone, "Such a
pathetic little bunch, don't you think?"

Raif reached behind his back and released his
pack. Swinging it forward, he let it come to rest in front of his
feet. He did not know what to say to Yustaffa, and felt something
close to dizziness attempting to track the fat man's words.

Sleet falling on Yustaffa's yellow tunic created
dimples in the fabric. He waited, eyebrows raised, in a pantomime of
expectation, before swinging suddenly about and launching the item
he'd been holding in his fist at the base of the firepile. A small
explosive thud sounded and hot white flames rolled out across the
wood. The crowd aahed in appreciation.

Yustaffa executed a trim bow and then looked Raif
straight in the eye. "Now we're all cozy around the fire you
really should tell us where you've been."

Raif gazed out on the faces of the Maimed Men.
About four hundred had gathered around the firepile, and they were
armed with a motley of weapons; rusted iron spears, beheading
cleavers, hooked pikes, scimitars, wooden staffs, clannish hammers,
broadswords, list poles, knuckleguards, knives. Most of the women and
every boy old enough to walk had daggers or other hilt weapons at
their waists. They lived in fear, Raif realized, and he could not
fault them for it. It was a hard life on the edge of the abyss.
Nothing but tough grass and weed trees would grow here. Children had
to be maimed by their parents, else risk strangers taking issue with
their wholeness. Whatever was needed was stolen from the clanholds .
. . or one another. The cragsman Addie Gunn had once tried to keep
sheep on the upper rim, but they were snatched one by one for meat.
Stillborn had once called the Maimed Men desperate, and warned Raif
that desperate men didn't make good friends.

Raif saw that desperation in them now. They were
lean and scaly and hollow-cheeked and he knew he had made a mistake
by not stopping to hunt in the canyonlands and bring meat. He had
come empty-handed. Just one more mouth to feed.

"There you go." Raif opened his hand and
accepted a felt-sheathed sword from Stillborn. He must have run down
to his cave to fetch it. "It's not pretty but it should do you
for a while." With a quick salute he slid away.

As he clipped the sword to his gear belt, Raif
searched the faces of the Maimed Men for Traggis Mole. The leader of
the Maimed Men was nowhere to be seen, but at the back of the crowd,
his face almost hidden by rising flames and black smoke, stood the
outlander, Thomas Argola. He did not blink as Raif regarded him, just
held his small, olive-skinned face level for inspection. Argola had
been the one who had pushed Raif into the Want after the raid on
Black Hole. Why? Raif wondered. Why had he readied a horse and
supplies? What had he known, or guessed?

"Come now, Twelvester. Didn't your mother
ever tell you it's churlish to keep people waiting?"

Yustaffa's piping voice broke through Raif's
thoughts. As the fat man finished speaking a stone hit the small of
Raif's back. Snapping around, Raif pounced toward the crowd. People
shied away from him. One woman, a tired-looking mother with a baby at
her teat, cried out in fright. Raif felt muscles in his jaw pumping
as he fought the itch to draw his new sword.

Yustaffa tutted with mock disapproval, deeply
gratified by Raif's reaction. "Shame on you, my fellow Rift
Brothers. You know the procedure. Story first. Stones later."
He smiled winningly at Raif. "Don't worry, I'm just saying that
to keep them quiet."

The flames were fierce now, leaping and crackling,
firing off sparks.

Darkness was rising, and it didn't take much to
imagine it was originating in the Rift. On the edge of the rimrock
Raif spied one of the windlasses that were used to lower bodies into
the abyss. He swallowed, wished again he had thought to bring meat.

Glancing once at Thomas Argola, he said, "I
journeyed into the Great Want and was lost for many days. I nearly
died, but a group of men called the lamb brothers found me, healed my
wounds, and set me on my way."

Several things happened as he spoke. When he named
the lamb brothers both Thomas Argola's and Yustaffa's faces
registered a beat of surprise. The outlander concealed his surprise
better, but Raif detected a momentary loosening of his jaw. Most of
the crowd listened in silence, drawing in breath when Raif had named
the Great Want, yet even before he'd finished wonder had been
replaced by suspicion.

"No one gets out of the Want," shrieked
the low-breasted hag who'd spoken earlier.

"Aye," agreed many in the crowd.

Someone else called out, "What was you doing
there anyway? Only madmen go the Want."

"Never heard of no lamb brothers,"
pitched in a shaggy bear of a man near the front.

Yustaffa sucked in his cheeks with relish. "Such
suspicion. Makes you wonder how they sleep at night."

"I've heard of the lamb brothers."

All turned to look at the tiny cragsman Addie Gunn
who was making his way across the rimrock. Addie had once been a
Wellman, and you could still see the clan in him. He wore a pouch
around his waist, but it contained salt, not guidestone. The habit of
carrying powder was a hard one to break. "The lamb brothers live
in the sand deserts of the Far South and they survive on ewe milk and
lamb meat and dress themselves in wool and fleeces."

Addie was fierce about matters pertaining to sheep
and no one in the crowd doubted his word. As a cragsman at Wellhouse
he had maintained his own herd. Raising a quick hand in greeting to
Raif, he addressed himself directly to Yustaffa. "You come from
the glass desert due north of the sands. Tell me you haven't heard of
them too."

As he watched Addie Gunn standing in the
firelight, arms folded across his chest, daring Yustaffa to lie to
the crowd, a muscle close to Raif's heart contracted. He had
forgotten the goodness here. For once Yustaffa was lost for words.
Coiling the end of his belt rope around his fat middle finger, he
hmmed and aahed and tutted. Finally, he let the rope go. "Well
now that you mention it," he said sulkily, "I do have a
recollection about them. Course it doesn't prove that they were in
the Want or that Twelve Kill actually met them."

Men started to jeer. He'd lost the crowd and he
knew it.

Addie shook his head slowly, frowning at Yustaffa
and the Maimed Men. "The lamb brothers live on the dunes. League
upon league of nothing but sand. Every hill looks like the next, and
by the time you've topped one your footprints have been blown clean
away and you can't even be sure which way you came. I ask you: How
much more difficult could the Want be than that?" The cragsman's
gaze darted from man to man, defying anyone to disagree with him.
None did. Addie Gunn was well respected here. His know-how brought in
goats and sheep. "Good," he said with a fatherly nod.
"That's sorted then. Now as for the fact of what the lad was
doing there in the first place I say this: Sometimes a man's business
is his own. He didna harm any Rift Brothers, and before he left I
watched with my own two eyes as he fought long and hard in the raid.
You don't have to take my word for it. There's Linden Moodie and
Stillborn and others who'll tell you just the same. Now granted the
lad's made a mistake not bringing supper for the pot, but I for one
will go out with him tomorrow. And between his fancy Sull bow and my
own two sheep eyes I have an inkling we'll bring something back. He's
useful, don't forget that. Twelve Kill by nature as well as name."

The crowd nodded. Most were quiet. A group of
older children broke away from the fire to kick around a leather
ball. Stillborn chose that moment to return to the space before the
fire. He was carrying a small burlap sack on his back and he shrugged
it forward, letting it drop onto the rimrock.

"Trail meat," he said with some
wistfulness, still looking at the sack. "Cured it myself last
autumn. Spiced it real good too. If there's babbies around with milk
teeth it'll knock 'em clean out." Unable to actually come out
with the words. Trail meat all round he walked away from the sack.

The Maimed Women pushed forward first. One woman,
a blond-haired maid with a cleanly excised left ear, shoved Yustaffa
in the backside to get to her share of meat. The fat man spun around
and smacked her face and she smacked him right back. Raif, Stillborn
and Addie Gun moved to the side. Glancing over his shoulder, Raif
looked to the place where he'd last seen Thomas Argola. The outlander
was gone.

"Addie," Raif said. "Thanks. You
saved my head."

The cragsman smacked his lips. "C'mon now,
lad. It was nothing."

Raif nodded solemnly. "Nothing."

Addie seemed pleased by this. "You'd better
get some sleep. We have to be up and out afore dawn. Well have to
cover a lot of ground. Bad time of year to go looking for game."

"Worse time to come back with nothing."
Stillborn also seemed pleased. "Guess I might come with you.
Someone'll have to wheel back the cart."

Addie looked at Stillborn as if he was exactly the
kind of person you didn't want on a stealth hunt. Which was probably
true. "If you're not at the east rim an hour afore sunup I'm not
waiting," was all the cragsman said in reply.

"Where's Traggis Mole?" Raif asked,
instantly killing the easy camaraderie between them.

Stillborn's large deformed face, with its seam of
flesh and black bristles running from the temple down to the neck,
sobered. "He's about all right, though I've seen him less of
late. He'll have been told you're here, but you know the Mole.
Chooses his own time."

Raif nodded. It was probably a mistake to feel
relief at that statement, but he couldn't help himself. Right now he
wanted to pull his aching feet from his boots, and sleep.

Perhaps seeing this, Stillborn said, "Cmon,
lad. Let's get you set for the night. You'd best stay with me. Addie.
You didn't do half a bad job up there. I never knew you had the gift
of the gab."

"Nor did I," Addie replied lightly
before slipping away.

Stillborn picked up Raif's pack as if it weighed
exactly nothing. Silently, he led Raif down the series of rope
ladders and stairs that led to his cliff cave. Raif was grateful not
to be probed or forced to think. He was dead tired and had stood so
long in the sleet that his hands and face were tingling.

The Rift music started as they arrived on the
lower terrace. Grass lamps had been lit and the city was aglow with
orange lights. The Rift music made the flames flicker. Bass murmurs,
low whistles and door-hinge creaks rose from the hole in the earth,
punctuated by long silences and sudden rock tremors. Raif could no
longer see the Rift, and was glad.

Stillborn's cave was accessed by a narrow ledge
that was separated from the rimrock by a drop of three feet. The
Maimed Man jumped down, careless of the hell that lay below him. Raif
couldn't manage such recklessness just then. He moved with care,
favoring his right foot, fearful of the drop and of his own ability
to manage the simple maneuver. Stillborn went ahead to light lamps.