A Sword From Red Ice (49 page)

A small quiver of fear passed through her, moving
up from her feet to her head. The pike was almost upon her. She could
see its pearly, razored teeth.

Suddenly she was yanked up and sideways. The
pike's jaw snapped closed. Something broke. Effie Sevrance was pulled
the long distance to the surface. It felt as if she were being sucked
from a tube.

Afterward she didn't remember much of the time
that followed. Waker's jelly eyes loomed big as he worked her chest
like a water pump. Waker's father actually said things. Proper words,
helpful words. Chedd Limehouse shivered and looked afraid. He was
told a dozen times to sit down and hold your place.

Effie smelled the good scent of woodsmoke and
slept. Waker roused her in the night, made her drink water she did
not want and felt her hands and feet. "She's bone cold."

She realized she must have been dreaming then, for
Waker's father actually said, "We must build a bigger fire."

Some time later in the orange glow of firelight,
Waker's father's face appeared above her own. He had the sneaky,
pleased-to-be-himself look in his eyes as he leaned close to her ear
and whispered his real name. He knew she would not remember it
tomorrow.

Morning came, and even though the sun shone in her
face and she was swaddled in the best and thickest blankets she could
not stop shivering. Waker's father brought her purple tea and
insisted she drink though its temperature was close to scalding. It
tasted like fat.

Chedd came over and knelt by her head. After
looking both ways to check that no one was in earshot he told her
what had happened and where they stood. "South shore of the
Wolf, on land claimed by Morning Star. Last night we could see the
lights of a village."

Effie didn't have the energy to pull herself up
and look around. The sky seemed nice and blue, and she could see that
some of the trees were oaks and water chestnuts waiting to bud.

"Waker pulled you from the water. You'd been
gone forever and we thought . . . I thought . . ." Chedd looked
down. Tears squeezed from his eyes and he wiped them away with his
shirtsleeve. "I had to hang on to the boat, Eff—I couldn't
come and get you because of these." Rolling on his side, he
brought his feet all the way up to her face so she could physically
see his ankle chains. "I'm a good swimmer. I could have done
it."

She believed him.

"Anyhows. No one knew where you were. Waker
was in a state, diving and coming up. Waker's da tells him to hold on
a mo' while he thinks. Waker's da's face gets all white and goosey
and he points to a piece of water and says, She's down there. You
should have seen Waker dive, like an otter after fish. He was down a
long time, Eff. Me and his da started getting afraid. His da turned
the boat and held it while I got in. Then he got in himself. And only
then, when we were both sitting steady, did Waker break the surface
with you."

Chedd wanted to tell her how she looked, but she
stopped him; Effie did not want to know. Realizing she would soon
need to pee, she asked him to help her to her feet. Gallantly, he
squatted beside her and wrapped a thick arm around her waist. As she
came to standing a wave of dizziness hit her. One hand came out for
Chedd, who took it like a rock. The other hand went up for her lore.

But her lore wasn't there.

The pike had taken it.

Alone and Armed in the Darkness

Traggis Mole's cronies were waiting for them when
they returned from the overnight hunt. It was late afternoon and the
light was deeply golden. Due to some subtle seasonal shift, the sun
was perfectly aligned with the Rift in the west. Red radiance poured
along the fissure, casting shadows that had no end.

Addie Gunn and Raif were dead-tired. Both had
stayed up late in the night hunting deer and then woke before dawn to
try for more. Stillborn on the other hand had fallen asleep at sunset
and stayed asleep until breakfast, when the smell of Addie roasting
goat's heart had finally roused him. He'd been lively all day, even
though he was the one hauling the majority of game. A full-grown doe
was balanced, yoke-like, across his shoulders. An impromptu sled made
from lashed willow poles that held the snagcat pelt, various cuts of
snagcat meat and a partially butchered fawn, was being pulled on a
leash attached to his waist. Addie carried the butchered goat and its
pelt in a game sack slung over his shoulder, and Raif carried a mixed
bag of ribs, spines, pelvises and longbones that could be boiled and
scraped for meat, marrow and fat. All three of them smelled like
blood, but Raif found he did not much dislike it. It reminded him of
longhunts with Da and Drey.

"At least he sent the pretty ones," was
all Stillborn said as they approached the eastern ledge.

Two Maimed Men awaiting them on the rimrock were
armed with thick spears of blackened and case-hardened iron. One wore
an armored cloak; a half-circle of boiled and pleated leather mounted
with coin-sized metal rings that had to weigh at least twenty pounds.
The other man wore chainmail that had rusted around the armpits and a
wool kilt over wool pants. Both men appeared whole, but Raif knew
better than to be fooled by that. Everyone in the Rift was missing
something, and experience had taught him that imperfections that did
not immediately meet the eye were usually the worst kind.

Some instinct, perhaps fear or simple habit, made
Raif stretch out a hand to read the air. The headwind was light and
from the north. Updrafts rising from the Rift were fitful and without
force.

Shucking off the bag of bones and letting it drop
onto the green granite of the ledge, he said to Addie and Stillborn.
"Take the meat. Go on ahead."

The little cragsman shook his head and was about
to tell Raif exactly what he thought of that idea when Stillborn also
shook his head. A single, curt shake aimed at silencing Addie Gunn.

"Come on," Stillborn said, somehow
managing to clap Addie on the shoulder while still balancing the
deer. "Let's make sure our Rift Brothers get the meat."

Addie hesitated. He knew how important the meat
was, knew also that the Maimed Men needed to see with their own eyes
who had brought it. Finally he asked Raif in a whisper, "Will
you be all right, lad?"

Raif stared at the man with the armored cloak as
he said, "I'll be fine. If you want to do me a favor find me
arrows. Two dozen with feather fletchings."

The cragsman nodded. "If you're not back by
midnight we'll come looking." Bending at the knee, he picked up
Raif's sack. It was still dripping blood.

As Addie and Stillborn walked ahead, Raif let his
right hand come to rest on the crossguard of his borrowed sword. It
was a small thing, but it drew the attention of Mole's men away from
Addie and Stillborn and to himself.

"You're coming with us to see the chief,"
said the man wearing the armored cloak. Now that he spoke, Raif saw
he was missing front teeth. When Raif failed to move, he thrust out
his spear. "Get walking."

He thought they would lead him down to Traggis
Mole's cave but they led him up to the high cliffs instead. Ancient
crumbling steps cut deep into the rock wound up through the city and
out onto the head-cliffs where the Maimed Men maintained their watch.
The cliffs bulged above the city like wasps' nests, round-walled and
tapering, connected to each other by a series of gangplanks known as
the Cloud Walk. Raif had not been up here before and he saw that the
rock was older and softer than the ledgerock below. Birds had made
and abandoned nests in the potholes, and dwarfed pines had grown and
died, leaving skeletons that rattled in the wind.

Both men were well-accustomed to the Cloud Walk
and navigated the wood-and-rope walkways with ease. Raif tried not to
look down, did look down and began to sway.

"We got a spinner," commented the
armored cloak man without rancor. Neither he nor the chainmail man
raised a hand to help.

Raif closed his fist around the guiderope. Two
ropes suspended at waist height and a foot-wide plank of wood were
all that was preventing him from crashing to the rimrock ninety feet
below. Wind set the ropes swaying, and the weight of three men on the
plank made the wood creak and bow. It would be easy to kill him. A
near forceless movement of the hand would be all it would take. Raif
tried to calm himself, but the world was tipping, and he was unsure
what to do with his body to counter it.

"Walk."

It was both an order and advice. He had been
holding too long on to the rope and had begun to lean into it—into
thin air. Blinking as if that could somehow help, Raif rocked his
weight onto his other foot and eased his hand from the rope. Giddy
nausea filled his head. It felt as if his brain had detached itself
from his spinal cord and was spinning like a top in his skull.
Drunkenly, he took a step forward. More spinning. Seen from above,
the city on the edge of the abyss looked like a chunk of driftwood
riddled with wormholes. After thinking that bit of nonsense he took
another step, followed by another one. Walking.

Two more gangways, a short tunnel, and a
drawbridge had to be navigated before they reached the western watch.
Raif developed a technique he called "looking at the stray hair
hanging down in front of my eye." To know its name was to know
how it worked. At some point during the second gangway he realized
what Traggis Mole was up to. Yet the knowledge that it was the Robber
Chief's intent to throw him off guard and render him weak at the
knees was strangely worthless. It didn't make the gangways any
easier.

The sun was setting by the time the two men
delivered him to the stack of freestanding rock where the Maimed Men
conducted their western watch and Traggis Mole stood waiting. Wind
and glaciers had carved out the stack, forming a structure that
protruded from the cliff wall like a thumb. The top was flat and
slightly canted toward the Rift. A fine down of sugar lichen covered
the rock.

As the two men withdrew they pulled on the hoist
ropes, raising the drawbridge and leaving Raif and Traggis Mole alone
and trapped on the stack.

The king of the city on the edge of the abyss
stood with his back turned to Raif, looking south beyond his domain
toward the clanholds. Dressed in a floor-length greatcloak of
horsehide edged with black swan feathers, nothing of his body was
visible below the neck. A bricked-in fire was burning close to the
center of the stack, and the Robber Chief must have tended it
recently for a stick close to his feet gave off a silky line of
smoke.

"Night falls," he said in greeting, not
looking round.

The sun, no longer aligned with the Rift, sank
beyond the canyon-lands sending out a dying breath of red light. Raif
looked down and saw the Orrl cloak reflecting the color perfectly,
looked back up and saw the sun was gone.

"Right now below us Stillborn is presenting a
snagcat to the Rift Brothers, claiming he brought it down with a
throw spear." Traggis Mole spun and pinned Raif with his stare.
"Does he lie?"

While the Robber Chief was in motion Raif fought
the desire to step back. No one he had ever met in his life moved as
inhumanly fast as Traggis Mole. The chief's wooden nose was strapped
in place above his air hole and as the first dew of dusk formed his
breath smoked white.

Raif said, "The blow that brought down the
cat was Stillborn's."

"Brought down and kill are not the same,"
Traggis Mole replied, whip-fast in his harsh Vorlander voice. "His
credit is undue."

"Stillborn's blow slowed the cat. Without it
mine would have gone wide."

Traggis Mole made no reply. Minutes passed and
silence stretched to the Rift and back before he called it in, "Do
you know he took your gold?"

Raif blinked. For a moment he felt just as he had
on the first gangway; as if the world were tipping sideways and he
was unsure how to right himself within it.

The Robber Chief's small round eyes took in all,
and gave nothing back. "The fifteen men who took part in the
raid on Black Hole were each given a gold rod to reward their
success. Ask Stillborn where yours is."

"I will not." The coldness of those
three words surprised Raif. There was a blur of motion, too fast to
be tracked wholly by the eye, and then Traggis Mole was standing by
the bricked-in fire, his cloak swinging at his heels like a child who
could not keep up. "Perhaps he assumed that riches do not
interest you."

Something in this statement seemed off-the-mark to
Raif. A fraction too much space separated the words and it seemed to
him that the Robber Chief was questing. Caution kept Raif silent.

Traggis Mole held the smoking stick in his gloved
hand, though Raif had no memory of him bending to pick it up. Walking
a circuit of the firepit, he scraped it along the wall. "Did
they tell you about the Rift wrall that walked amongst us? How many
fought it and how many it killed? Did your fine friends tell you that
they arrived too late and the beast had already passed? Did they also
tell you that every night I stand watch here, high above my city, and
look down into the Rift? And did they tell you that once you start
watching it never ends?"

The Robber Chief threw the stick into the fire,
where it flared bright for a moment and then was gone. "Night
falls and the shadows gather, and to watch you must grow accustomed
to the dark. Bide where I stand, Raif Twelve Kill—alone and
armed in the darkness—and ask yourself is this a prize worth
winning, or a hole without end that will suck away your life?"

Raif made a gesture with his head; he did not know
what it was nor what he meant.

"You did not think you could come here and
keep your intent hidden?" Traggis Mole asked, turning so that
the fire lit the down-facing planes of his face. "No subtlety
conceals Stillborn's plans for you. You should ask him why he would
not take the city alone, and then listen very hard to the answer.
He's a good hunter and liked as well as any man is liked in this
god-spurned place. If you had not returned two days back do you think
he would have challenged me?"