A Cavern of Black Ice (10 page)

Raif's hand came up to his neck to
search for the reassuring smoothness of his raven lore. Clan
preparing for war? Had they already received word of the raid?

Five days he and Drey had been
traveling on foot. Five days of freezing nights, bitterly cold days,
and driving winds. Raif was tired beyond knowing. He couldn't recall
the last time he had felt warm or completely dry. They had run out of
ale on the second day, and Raif's lips were cracked from sucking on
ice. It was only yesterday morning, when they'd finally crossed over
the balds and into the clanholds, that the temperature had begun to
rise above freezing. Yet that was when the sleet started, so there
was little reward for leaving the badlands behind.

Through it all Raif had felt a deep
sense of unease. Freshly broken twigs, sap frozen around the break,
hoofprints stamped in hoarfrost, and broken ice over melt ponds kept
catching his eye. Elks and bears could break surface ice and twigs,
he told himself, and lone hunters from Clan Orrl often used
Blackhail's hunting paths. Yet Raif felt no better for telling
himself such things. They sounded reasonable, but they didn't stick.

'Come on, Raif. Race you to the rise."
Drey grabbed Raif's arm and yanked it hard as he ran ahead. Raif
grinned. Not wanting to disappoint his brother again, he tore after
him, crashing through tangles of ground birch and alder, his pack
slamming against his side as he ran.

Drey was the stronger runner, and even
sweeping in wide arcs and topping every rock and fallen log he
encountered, he reached the slope well before Raif. Climbing halfway
to the rise, Drey turned, grinned, and waited for his brother to
catch up.

Raif was breathless by the time he
reached him. Blisters on his heels rubbed raw by days of walking
throbbed like burned skin. Raif found comfort in the fact that Drey
was clearly favoring his right foot, and his face was as red as beet
water.

'We're home, Raif," Drey said,
punching Raif's pack. "Home!"

Raif swung a punch at Drey's ribs, then
took off at full speed toward the rise. Drey yelled after him to
wait, called him a devil's cur and a moose stag in rut, and then
started running himself.

Laughing, whooping, and wrestling, the
two brothers reached the rise. They stopped dead when they saw the
meet party riding up the leeward slope toward them.

Corbie Meese, Shor Gormalin, Orwin
Shank and his two middle sons, Will Hawk, Bailie the Red, a dozen
yearmen and tied clansmen, Raina Blackhail, Merritt Ganlow, and the
clan guide Inigar Stoop. All including the women and Inigar Stoop
were heavily armed. Spears bristled in their couchings, and
greatswords, hammers, and more than a few war axes weighed across
backs. Bailie the Red's great yew longbow was braced and ready in its
case, his side quiver fat with the red arrows that gave him his name.
Shor Gormalin carried only a short-sword. It was all the soft-spoken
swordsman ever needed.

Then, as Raif and Drey stood on the
ridge, side by side, breathless, their exposed faces cooling in the
sleety air, the troop of two dozen parted and through their midst,
wearing a cloak made of black wolf fur that rippled in the wind like
a living, breathing thing, rode Mace Blackhail high atop Dagro
Blackhail's blue roan.

Drey gasped.

Raif looked hard into Mace Blackhail's
face. And didn't stop looking until Mace met his eyes. "
Traitor
."

The word brought the meet party to a
halt.

At his side, Raif heard Drey inhale
sharply.

Mace Blackhail didn't blink. Bringing
up a hand gloved in the finest lamb's leather and dyed three times
until it was the perfect shade of black, he made a settling motion to
those behind him. He held Raif's gaze for a time, sleet collecting in
his oiled braids and sliding down his narrow nose and cheeks. When he
spoke it was to Drey.

'Where were you when the attack came?"

Drey straightened his shoulders. "Raif
and I were out at the lick, shooting hares."

'Where were
you
?" The
hardness of Raif's voice caused some in the party to draw breath.
Raif hardly cared. Mace Blackhail was standing before him, mounted on
Dagro Blackhail's horse, unharmed, well fed, and acting like lord of
the clan. Raif's lore burned like a hot coal around his neck. While
he and Drey had stayed at the camp taking care of the dead, Mace
Blackhail had ridden back to the roundhouse in haste. It was the blue
roan that had stamped its hooves in mud and hoarfrost and broken ice
in newly set ponds, not some daring Maimed Raider or a lone Orrlsman
tracking game.

"I," Mace Blackhail said, his
voice equally as hard as Raif's, "was seeing off a bear at Old
Hoopers Lake. The beast broke bounds at first light, spooked the
horses. Killed two dogs. I headed it off, chased it east along the
rush, and speared its neck. Just as I was set to finish the kill, I
heard sounds of fighting from the west. I rode back to the camp at
full gallop, but it was too late. The last of the Clan Bludd raiders
were already riding away."

As he spoke the last sentence, Mace
looked down and touched the pouch containing ground guidestone that
hung from one of the many leather belts around his waist. Others in
the party did likewise.

After a moment Drey did the same. The
muscles in his throat worked a moment, and then he repeated softly,
"Clan Bludd?"

Mace nodded. His wolf cloak gleamed
like oil floating on the surface of a lake. "I saw the last of
them. Caught sight of their spiked hammers and the red felt laid over
their horses' docks."

Bailie the Red shook his head gently,
his callused archer's hands caressing the red-tailed hawk fletchings
on his arrows. " Tis a bad thing for a clansman to do: make raid
on another's camp at first light."

Corbie Meese, Will Hawk, and others
grunted in agreement.

Raif spoke up to silence them. "The
raid didn't take place at first light. It happened at noon. I didn't
feel anything until—"

Raif felt Drey's fist hit the small of
his back. Not an all-out punch, but enough to knock some wind from
his lungs.

"We don't know when the raid took
place, Raif," Drey said over-loudly, clearly unhappy at having
to speak out. "You got a bad notion in the pit of your stomach
at noon, but who's to say the raid didn't happen before then?"

"But, Drey-"

"Raif!"

In all his life Raif had never heard
Drey speak his name with such harshness. Raif pressed his lips to a
line. Heat flared in his cheeks.

"Drey." Raina Blackhail
trotted her filly forward, coming to a halt a few paces ahead of her
foster son, Mace. White smoke streamed from the filly's nostrils.
"What did you see when you came upon the campsite?"

Raif watched Raina's face as he waited
for his brother to reply. Raina Blackhail's gray eyes gave little
away. Dagro Blackhail's first wife, Norala, had died of lump fever,
and Raina was his second wife, taken in the hope that she would
provide the clan chief with a son to carry his name. After the second
year of marriage, when Raina's belly had failed to quicken, Dagro
Blackhail had reluctantly taken a foster son, a child of his sister's
from Clan Scarpe. Mace had been eleven when he was brought to the
Blackhail roundhouse, just eight years younger than his foster
mother, Raina.

Drey glanced at Raif before he answered
Raina's question. "We reached the camp about an hour before
dark. We saw the dogs first, then Jorry Shank…" Drey
hesitated. Orwin Shank, Jorry's father, leaned forward in his saddle,
his normally ruddy face as pale as if it were covered by a sheet of
rime ice. "I don't know how long he'd been there, lying in the
scrub, but he was part frozen. And there wasn't a lot of blood."

Mace Blackhail kicked the roan's flank,
then quickly pulled the reins, causing the gelding to stamp its feet
and shake its head. "It's just as I said," he cried, easily
controlling the agitated roan. "The Bludds-men are arming
themselves with hell-forged swords. They slip into a man's gut as
smooth as a spoon scooping bacon fat, then burn his insides hot and
fast, roasting his flesh around the blade."

Merritt Ganlow swayed in her saddle.
White-haired Inigar Stoop leaned over and steadied her, his pouches,
horns, and slices of bone tinkling like shells as he moved.

Raina Blackhail shot a warning glance
to her foster son. "Drey hasn't finished yet."

Drey shifted his weight. He wasn't
comfortable being the center of attention. "Well… I don't
know about hell-forged blades. I didn't see any signs of burnt
flesh…"

"Go on." Raina Blackhail's
voice, while not gentle, was no longer as severe as it had been.

"Raif and I went around the camp.
We tended the bodies: Meth Ganlow, Halfmast—I mean Darri—Mallon
Clayhorn, Chad… all the others." Drey swallowed hard.
Raif saw where his brother had gripped his oilskin so tight, the hide
had split along the seam. "All the wounds looked the same:
clean, not much blood, swiftly done. Broadswords or greatswords
looked to have been used."

"It's as Mace says," murmured
Bailie the Red. "Clan Bludd." Many in the party nodded and
murmured, "Aye." Noticing that Raina Blackhail was one of
the few who remained silent, Raif spoke up, addressing his words to
her alone. "Clan Bludd aren't the only ones who use greatswords.
Clan Dhoone, Clan Croser, Clan Gnash"—Raif stopped himself
from naming Clan Scarpe, Mace Blackhail's birth clan—"Maimed
Men: All use swords as their second weapons."

Mace Blackhail kicked the roan forward,
coming to rest mere paces in front of Raif. "I said I saw
Bluddsmen fleeing from the camp. Are you calling me a liar,
Sevrance?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Raif saw
Drey's hand come up, meaning to pull him back. Raif stepped away, out
of his brother's reach. He would not be silenced in this. Gaze fixed
firmly on Mace Blackhail's narrow, gray-skinned face, Raif said,
"Drey and I saw to our clansmen. We didn't leave them out on the
tundra for the carrion beasts to take them. We gave them blood rites,
drew a guide circle around them. Paid them due respect. What I
am
saying is that perhaps you were in too much of a hurry to get back to
the roundhouse to pay retreating raiders fair due."

Drey swore, softly to himself.

Everyone in the meet party had some
reaction. Bailie the Red snorted, Merritt Ganlow let out a high,
wailing cry, Corbie Meese sucked air between his wind-cracked lips,
and the color returned to Orwin Shank's face as quickly as if he had
been sprayed with paint. Shor Gormalin moved his head in what might
have been a nod of agreement.

Raina Blackhail, almost as if she were
afraid of showing any reaction, raised a gloved hand to her shoulders
and pulled up her sable hood. Even though he was aware it was
ridiculous to think of such a thing at such a time, Raif couldn't
help but be struck by Raina Black-bail's beauty. She wasn't pretty,
not in the way that young girls like Lansa and Hailly Tanner were,
but a kind of clear strength shone in her eyes that made everyone who
saw her look twice. Raif wondered if she would ever marry again.

Mace Blackhail waited until everyone
was quiet before he spoke his reply. His eyes were as hard and bloody
as frozen meat. A small movement sent his wolf fur rippling and
served to expose the sword at his thigh. Ignoring Raif completely, he
turned to face the meet party. "I won't deny that I rode back as
fast as I could—the boy has the truth of it there." Mace
paused, allowing a moment for the slight emphasis he had placed on
the word
boy
to sink in.

"I wasn't thinking of the dead, I
admit that. And I look back now and I'm ashamed of what I did. But
when I saw my father's body lying on the ground near the posts, his
eyes frosting over even as I looked, all I could think of were the
people at home. The Bluddsmen were heading east, yet what if they
turned at the Muzzle and headed south instead? What if, whilst I
stood there deciding whether to pull my father's body from the cold
or hold blood rites where it lay, a second, greater party descended
on the roundhouse itself? What if I returned to find that the same
thing that had happened to my father and his camp had happened
here
in the Heart of Clan?"

Mace Blackhail met the eyes of all who
counted one by one. No one spoke, but some of the yearmen, including
Orwin Shank's two middle sons, shifted restlessly in their saddles.

Sleet flew into the faces of the meet
party, melting against the hot, flushed skins of Orwin Shank and his
sons, Bailie the Red, Corbie Meese, and Merritt Ganlow, while
clinging and staying partially frozen against the paler skins of Shor
Gormalin, Raina Blackhail, and Will Hawk. All sleet that fell on Mace
Blackhail turned to ice.

Finally, after he had forced many in
the meet party to look away, Mace Blackhail spoke again. "I am
sorry for what I did, but I would not change it. I believe my father
would have done the same. It was a choice between the living and the
dead, and everyone here who knew and loved Dagro Blackhail must allow
that his first thoughts would have been for his wife and his clan."

Bailie the Red nodded. Others followed.
The tendons to either side of Corbie Meese's powerful hammerman's
neck strained against his skin, and after a moment he looked down and
murmured, "That's the truth of it." Raina Blackhail edged
her filly round, so that her face was not visible to anyone in the
party, including her foster son.

Raif stood at Mace's back. The
bristling anger he had felt at being called a boy was now mixed with
something else: a kind of slow-setting fear. Mace Blackhail was going
to get away with it. Raif could see it on the faces of the meet
party. Even Shor Gormalin, who never rushed to judgment on anything
and was as careful about all decisions he made as he was with his
blade around children, was nodding along with the rest. Didn't he
see? Didn't he realize?