A Sword From Red Ice (94 page)

"Stand of red pines beyond the rocks."

The sign of the Bludd border. They headed west
toward it, their spirits lifting. Here was a marker that could help
them. The trees were planted along a north-south axis in single file
along a south-racing slope. It was dark by the time they reached
them, and you could no longer tell they were red pines.

"Let's set camp," Addie said, smiling
for the first time in two days. "I think this calls for a spot
of tea."

They set camp hard against the pines, both fearing
that if they didn't the trees might disappear in the night. A new
leech was applied, a fire built. Roasted meat was set to warm on
rocks.

As they sat, bending their heads toward the
searing heat of the fire and enjoying the dregs of the tea, Raif's
raven lore stirred. It had been so long since the hard, black piece
of bird ivory had moved he had not spared it a thought in weeks. Some
disturbance in his heart or blood triggered the leeches, and the two
that were attached to him dropped off. Raif stood, his hand feeling
for Traggis Mole's longknife.

Addie rose a moment later, and both men pulled
their bows and arrowcases from the gear pile that had been lazily
heaped on broken-off cedar boughs. Swiftly they pulled off gloves.
Neither spoke. Things had changed between them. But not this.

With his gaze facing out from the fire, the
cragsman tugged at the cedar boughs, tumbling packs and blankets into
the snow. Without looking at the flames he fed them. Raif faced
north, toward a slope he could barely see. The stars were out in cold
lightless force. There was no moon.

Crack.

Both men swung to face the sound of an exploding
tree. In Sull territory: they could say that with conviction now as
the noise came from east of the red pines. Addie Gunn and Raif
Sevrance trained drawn bows into the darkness. Addie's sturdy
self-made yew ticked with a reassuring sound as it held tension. The
Sull longbow made no sound.

When a soft crackling noise came from the west
neither one was expecting it. Addie swung around and immediately
loosed his bow through the pines. Raif perceived the damning suction
of an unmade heart.

And then felt its small and deadly echo a hair
breadth away from his own. The Shatan Maer's claw was trying to home.

Leeches are my friends, he thought inanely, his
gaze searching for forms in the blackness. Addie raised a second
arrow to the plate, and as he pulled back the twine Raif became aware
of a second heart. Back in Sull territory, moving forward from a
position not far from where the tree had exploded. Quickly he made a
calculation. Swinging his attention fully east he left the creature
on the other side of the red pines for Addie Gunn.

East was where the greatest threat lay. He could
feel it in his lore and his plagued and punctured heart. A shape
rippled into existence, then disappeared. It was big and man-shaped
and Raif did not want it near him. Ever since the night on the
rimrock he'd had no trust in hand-to-hand combat with blades. Let the
Sull bow and the case-hardened arrowheads do the work.

Keep away, he murmured under his breath. Keep
away.

Suddenly there was a series of crunches to the
west. Addie loosed a second arrow, rumbled, replated. The footfalls
accelerated, smashing the frozen snow with their force. Raif could no
longer stand it and swung to second his friend.

Both men loosed their arrows in perfect time. A
single thuc sounded with the depth and richness of a musical chord.
The arrowheads converged . . . and slammed together in the unmade
heart. Sparks shot out of shadowflesh. Something not human jerked
upward and then collapsed. A sound on the edge of hearing sizzled
through the forest air.

Pivoting east on the balls of his feet, Raif
reloaded and drew his bow. The cragsman was a half-second behind him.
Flames shivered at their backs, casting fans of jittery shadows at
their feet. Clouds of bitter-smelling smoke pumped outward from the
fire stack; items from their gear pile were going up in flames.

Raif scanned the darkness for the man-shaped
thing's heart. His own heart was fluttering queerly, and he could
feel the shadowflesh burning through it like a hot ember set upon
wax. All was still. Addie's breaths were ragged, but his grip on the
bow was rock-firm. The moon began to rise above the treeline, its
light beaming in their faces and moving between the trees. Without
realizing it both men edged away from the camp. Addie was taking
Raif's lead, and Raif was moving in the direction he'd last seen the
Unmade.

The fire went out. Darkness was sudden and
complete. Flattened coals popped and spat. Something hot landed by
Raif's heel. He and Addie swung back to face the killed fire. Addie
let an arrow fly into the swirling blackness of night and smoke. Raif
understood the impulse but held. He knew exactly how long it took him
to reload and draw a bow. It was too long. An eyeblink, that was the
difference between life and death.

The man-shaped thing rushed them. It pushed its
own shape before it in smoke. Moonlight bent toward its thick
diamond-shaped blade. Raif loosed his arrow. Even before the twine
recoiled he had thrown down the bow. The arrowhead had penetrated
heart muscle but it had not gone deep enough into the gristle and the
thing still came at them.

"Addie. Get back," he heard himself
scream as Traggis Mole's longknife scribed the quarter-circle from
his hip to a position at right-angle to his chest. Raif saw the
creature's hollow, craving eyes. Heard the explosive crack of its
weight coming down upon pine needles suspended in ice. Its blade had
to be four feet long. Raif's was two.

Raif leaped forward, feinted right. The man-shaped
thing swung his sword at him like a club. It was screeching like a
seagull. Raif stepped behind it, made the thing turn. Voided steel
came at him: its edge the glistening razor where chaos and
destruction met. It stunk like the absence of all things. Raif rolled
ahead of it, felt it touch his lower rib. Life heat sucked from the
hole. Springing up Raif braced the Mole's longknife against the hard
plate where muscle met bone in the exact center of his ribcage. The
man-thing was yanking back its blade for another strike. There was
air around its chest.

Traggis Mole's longknife was inhumanly sharp,
sharper than any sword Raif had ever wielded in his entire
eighteen-year life. It seemed to take no pressure at all to puncture
shadowflesh, no effort at all to slide between the dark ventricles of
the grossly inhuman heart. Voided steel came up, touched real steel
with a queer vibrating tone. That carried no force.

Raif yanked out the blade, rolled clear onto the
snow. Embers and pine needles crackled as his spine crushed them. The
man-thing rocked like a wedge-cut tree about to topple, and then went
crashing to the ground.

Deep and perfect silence followed. Neither Raif
nor Addie moved. The cragsman was standing upslope from the camp by
the tallest of the red pines. Moonlight made his face blue. A great
gray owl calling out across the forest broke the silence. Hoo. Hoo.
Hoo. Addie was the first to move, rushing toward Raif. Raif thought
he'd like to stay a while lying down in the snow and did just that.

"C'mon, lad," Addie's voice was hard,
angry. His finger poked at Raif's ribs like sticks. "Get up now.
Get up."

Raif blinked at him and thought, Leave me be old
man. I'm tired.

Addie Gunn would not let Raif Sevrance be. He was
a cragsman and he knew how to leverage his weight to haul sheep, and
that's what he did to Raif. He hauled Raif up over his shoulder and
carried him clear of the camp. When he found a bed of tender yearling
spruce he deposited Raif upon it. Two layers of rawhide were yanked
up. The leech jar was opened. Curses were sworn, and then Raif felt
the circle-bite of a fresh leech on his back.

"Wait here," Addie said, unclasping his
cloak and laying it over him. "I'm going back to get the gear."

Raif waited and then slept.

Two times in the night he was roused by Addie, yet
Raif managed to submit to the cragsman's ministrations while not
fully waking. His dreams were all of death, of that moment that
divided this world from the next. The eyeblink. The thin line. The
failure of the heart.

When he awoke fully and properly it was light. He
was still lying on the spruce, curled up on his side. A new pain in
his lowest rib just above his spleen throbbed with dull persistence.
He supposed he should be grateful the voided steel had touched bone.

Addie was sitting by a fire the size of a horse,
toasting a piece of liver on a stick. He had a wild, disheveled look
about him. His hair was sticking up and some of it was frozen. A pine
needle was embedded in his cheek. The corner of one of the blankets
that hung across his shoulders had been scorched. When he heard Raif
move he looked over and said, "Ain't getting no easier."

It was the closest Addie Gunn had ever come to
complaining.

Raif stood. It took a moment for all the various
hurts and bruises to settle themselves into place. Some kind of order
was being established, a hierarchy of pain. A snap of dizziness hit
as he crossed to the fire, but he forced himself to walk through it.
"Breakfast?" he asked, coming to a halt by the wall of
yellow flames.

"Aye. Tea's gone. Liver's dry. There's
hardbread on the rock."

Raif took a drink of hot water and forced himself
to eat the liver. The hardbread had been placed on a rock in the
embers and was slowly turning black.

The heat from the fire was intense. After a while
Raif had to step away. The cragsman must have been up all night
building and tending it. As he walked around the hastily set camp
that lay about a hundred feet above the old one, Raif wondered what
to say to Addie. Sleep, I'll stand watch. Sorry about worrying you
sick. Sorry I didn't offer the stormglass for trade that day by the
campfire. All apologies were too late, he comprehended, running a
gloved hand along an icicle that hung from one of the red pines. And
Raif Sevrance did not have the time to watch Addie Gunn while he
slept. Returning to the fire, he asked, "How many leeches?"
Addie rose to his feet. He understood what the question meant—time
to get moving—and by making himself suddenly busy he could duck
the need for an answer. They had to be down to the last ten by now:
not enough to outlast the day.

The sack containing the tea had been lost to last
night's fire, along with one of Addie's mitts and some spare
clothing. Addie cut the toe off one of his socks and declared it a
glove. Raif threw snow on the flames and watched it turn to steam. It
took ten precious minutes to kill the fire. The sun was already
visible above the forest canopy; a slender disk circled by mirages.
They'd already lost an hour and a half of daylight. What was Addie
thinking, leaving him to sleep?

Raif set the pace north. Even when the stand or
red pines was hidden behind the crest of the slope the path was
clear. They had to keep heading along the same axis. If the red pines
marked the true border between the Racklands and Bludd then all they
had to do was maintain their bearings and eventually they'd cross the
Red Ice. If what the Trenchlander said was true. It had to be true.
Raif didn't have time for it not to be.

One border. Four worlds. If they went far enough
north would they enter the Want? And if they did would they know it?
Raif looked down at the forested valley that lay below them, the
spires of cedar, the knuckles of red rock, the frozen streams, the
kitty hawk circling for prey. It looked too full of life to be named
the Great Want.

"Clouds are coming in."

Raif saw that Addie was right. A dark crack had
opened up on the edge of the horizon. A blackness in the silver of
the sky.

They spent the morning crossing the valley, eating
on foot and stopping only to apply new leeches. The air was raw and
changing, and the wind started to show its teeth. Raif walked huddled
in the Orrl cloak, slightly bent at the waist to relieve the pressure
of the wound. Addie had cleaned and bandaged it in the night; he said
it was shaped like an X.

Raif found his thoughts kept returning to the
moment the fire had gone out. If the Unmade had extinguished it then
that meant they were capable of cunning. And that was something new
and dangerous. Creatures that could plan as well as fight.

By the time they reached the valley's northern
slope the clouds were moving with force. Sharp gusts broke icicles
and brittle branches from the pines. Addie and Raif walked against
the headwind, shoulders hunched. When they came across two big trees
with boughs interlaced they stopped to shelter from the weather and
apply another leech. They were down to one at a time now. As Addie
took the jar from his gear pouch, Raif saw how few were left. And not
all of them were moving.

The cragsman had trouble getting the leech to bite
and prodded Raif's back several times. When he took his hand away his
fingers were red with blood. "It's hanging," he said
grimly. "Gods help it to stay in place."

To change the subject, Raif told Addie about
Thomas Argola's words. "Four worlds?" Addie pondered,
wiping his hand on his cloak. "Clanholds. Sull." He
frowned. "The Want?"

Raif shrugged. "What could be the fourth?"

Addie tugged on the sock with force, quickly
losing his patience with puzzling. "How the hell would I know
that, lad? I'm a sheepman not a scholar. If it's land I know it. If
it's fancy worlds dreamed up by Argola then I can't see that either
of us has much of a chance of figuring it out."

Raif considered this. "I think you just
insulted me."

Addie harrumphed. "Well I insulted myself as
well."

The day darkened quickly as the thunderheads
charged the sky. Raif felt wire-drawn and full of energy. His
thoughts thrived in the gray stormlight, rippled along with the
trees. He saw Traggis Mole take his final breath, sucking air through
his nose hole, heard Yiselle No Knife ask quite clearly, Do you know
how to start a stopped heart? And smelled the emptiness of the space
between the stars, the stench of voided steel.