A Cavern of Black Ice (3 page)

Raif smiled. Tem Sevrance knew his sons
well.

"Put on your gloves." It was
Drey, acting just like an older brother. "And pull up your hood.
Temperature's dropping fast."

Raif did what he was told, struggling
to put on gloves with hands that felt big and slow. Drey was right:
It was getting colder. Another shiver worked its way up Raif's spine,
making his shoulders jerk awkwardly. "Let's go." Drey's
thoroughness was beginning to nettle him. They had to get back to the
camp. Now. Something wasn't right.

Although Tem warned them constantly
about the danger of using up all their energy by running in the cold,
Raif couldn't stop himself. Despite spitting profusely, he couldn't
remove the taste of metal from his mouth. The air smelled bad, and
the clouds overhead seemed darker, lower,
closer
. To
the south lay a line of bald, featureless hills, and west of them lay
the Coastal Ranges. Tem said that the Ranges were the reason why the
Want and the badlands were so dry. He said their peaks milked every
last drop of moisture from passing storms.

The three hares Raif had shot earlier
thumped up and down in his pack as he ran. Raif hated their warmth
against his thigh, was sickened by their fresh-kill smell. When the
two brothers came upon Old Hoopers Lake, Raif tore the pack from his
belt and threw it into the center of the dull black water. Old
Hoopers wasn't frozen yet. River fed, it would take a full week of
frost before its current-driven waters plated. Still, the lake had
the greasy look of imminent ice about it. As Raifs pack sank to the
bottom, swirls of vegetable oils and tufts of elk hair bobbed up and
down on the surface.

Drey swore. Raif didn't catch what he
said, but he imagined the words
waste of fine game
in their
place.

As the brothers ran south, the
landscape gradually changed. Trees grew straighter and taller, and
there were more of them. Beds of lichen were replaced by long
grasses, bushes, and sedge. Horse and game tracks formed paths
through the frozen foliage, and fat grouse flew up from the
undergrowth, all flying feathers and spitting beaks.

Raif barely noticed. Close to the camp
perimeter now, they should have been able to see smoke, hear the
sound of metal rasping against metal, raised voices, laughter. Dagro
Blackhail's foster son, Mace, should be riding to greet them on his
fat-necked cob.

Drey swore again. Quietly, to himself.

Raif resisted the urge to glance over
at his brother's face. He was frightened of what he might see.

A powerful horseman, archer, and
hammerman, Drey pulled ahead of Raif as he charged down the slope to
the camp. Raif pushed himself harder, balling his fists and thrusting
out his chin. He didn't want to lose sight of his brother, hated the
thought of Drey arriving at the tent circle alone.

Fear stretched over Raifs body like a
drying hide, pulling at his skin and gut. They had left thirteen men
standing by at the camp: Dagro Blackball and his son, Mace; Tem; Chad
and Jorry Shank; Mallon Clayhorn and his son, Darri, whom everyone
called Halfmast…

Raif shook his head softly. Thirteen
men alone on the badlands plains suddenly seemed unbelievably easy
prey. Dhoonesmen, Bludds men, and Maimed Men were out there. Raifs
stomach clenched. And the Sull. The Sull were out there, too.

The dark, weather-stained tents came
into view. All was quiet. There were no horses or dogs in sight. The
firepit was a dark gaping hole in the center of the cleared space.
Loose tent flaps ripped in the wind like banners at battle's end.
Drey had broken ahead, but now he stopped and waited for Raif to join
him. His breath came hard and fast, and spent air vented from his
nose and mouth in great white streams. He did not look round as Raif
approached.

'Draw your weapon," he hissed.

Raif already had, but he scored the
blade of his halfsword against its boiled-leather scabbard, mimicking
the noise of drawing. Drey moved forward when he heard it.

They came upon Jorry Shank's body
first. It was lying in a feed ditch close to the horse posts. Drey
had to turn the body to find the deathwound. The portion of Jorry's
face that had been lying against the earth had taken on the yellow
bloom of frozen flesh. The wound was as big as a fist, heart deep,
made with a greatsword, and for some reason there was hardly any
blood.

'Maybe the blood froze as it left him,"
Drey murmured, settling the body back in place. The words sounded
like a prayer.

'He never got chance to draw his
weapon. Look." Raif was surprised at how calm his voice sounded.

Drey nodded. He patted Jorry's shoulder
and then stood away.

'There's horse tracks. See." Raif
kicked the ground near the first post. He found it easier to
concentrate on what he could see here, on the camp perimeter, than
turn his sights toward the tent circle and the one shabby, oft
repaired, hide-and-moose-felt tent that belonged to Tem Sevrance.
"Those shoemarks weren't made by Blackhail horses."

'Bluddsmen use a grooved shoe."

So did other clans and even some city
men, yet Raif had no desire to contradict his brother. Clan Bludd's
numbers were swelling, and border and cattle raids had become more
frequent. Vaylo Bludd had seven sons, and it was rumored he wanted a
separate clanhold for each of them. Mace Blackhail said that Vaylo
Bludd killed and ate his own dogs, even when he had elk and bear meat
turning on the spit above his fire. Raif didn't believe the story for
a moment—to eat one's own dogs was considered a kind of
cannibalism to a clansman, justifiable only in the event of ice-bound
starvation and imminent death—but others, including Drey, did.
Mace Blackhail was three years older than Drey: when he spoke, Drey
took heed.

As Drey and Raif approached the tent
circle, their pace slowed. Dead dogs lay in the dirt, saliva frozen
around their blunted fangs, their coats shaggy with ice. Fixed yellow
eyes stared from massive gray heads. Glacial winds had set rising
hackles in place, giving the dogs' corpses the bunched-neck look of
buffalo. As with Jorry Shank's body, there was little blood.

Raif smelled stinking, smelted metal
everywhere. The air around the camp seemed different, yet he didn't
have the words to describe it. It reminded him of the slowly
congealing surface water on Old Hoopers Lake. Something had caused
the very air to thicken and change. Something with the force of
winter itself.

'Raif! Here!"

Drey had crossed into the tent circle
and was kneeling close to the firepit. Raif saw the usual line of
pots and drying hides suspended on spruce branches over the pit, and
the load of timber waiting to be quartered for firewood. He even saw
the partially butchered black bear carcass that Dagro Blackhail had
brought down yesterday in the sedge meadow to the east. The bearskin,
which he had been so proud of, had been set to dry on a nearby rack.
Dagro had planned to present it as a gift to his wife, Raina, when
the hunt party returned to the roundhouse.

But Dagro Blackhail, chief of Clan
Blackhail, would never return home.

Drey knelt over his partially frozen
corpse. Dagro had taken a massive broadsword stroke from behind. His
hands were speckled with blood, and the thick-bladed cleaver he still
held in his grip was similarly marked. The blood was neither his nor
his attackers'. It came from the skinned and eviscerated bear carcass
lying at his feet; Dagro must have been finishing the butchering when
he was jumped from behind.

Raif took a quick unsteady breath and
sank down by his brother's side. Something was blocking his throat.
Dagro Blackhail's great bear of a face looked up at him. The clan
chief did not look at peace. Fury was frozen in his eyes. Glaciated
ice in his beard and mustache framed a mouth pressed hard in anger.
Raif thanked the Stone Gods that his brother wasn't the kind of
man to speak needlessly, and the two sat in silence, shoulders
touching, as they paid due respect to the man who had led Clan
Blackhail for twenty-nine years and was loved and honored by all in
the clan.

'He's a fair man," Tern had said
once about the clan chief in a rare moment when he was inclined to
speak about matters other than hunting and dogs. "It may seem
like small purchase, and you'll find others in the clan willing to
heap all manner of praise upon Dagro Blackhail's head, but fairness
is the hardest thing for a man to practice day to day. A chief can
find himself having to speak up against his sworn brothers and his
kin. And that's not easy for anyone to do."

It was, Raif thought, one of the
longest speeches he'd ever heard his father make.

'It's not right, Raif." Drey said
only that as he raised himself clear of Dagro Blackhail's body, but
Raif knew what he meant. It
wasn't
right.

Mounted men had been here; broadswords
and greatswords had been used; clan horses were gone, stolen. Dogs
were slaughtered. The camp lay in open ground, Mace Blackhail was
standing dogwatch: a raiding party should not have been able to
approach unheeded. Mounted men made noise, especially here in the
badlands, where the bone-hard tundra dealt harshly with anything
traveling upon it. And then there was the lack of blood…

Raif pushed back his hood and ran a
gloved hand through the tangle of his dark hair. Drey was making his
way toward Tern's tent. Raif wanted to call him back, to tell him
that they should check the other tents first, the rendering pits, the
stream bank, the far perimeter,
anywhere
except that tent.
Drey, as if sensing some small portion of his younger brother's
thoughts, turned. He made a small beckoning gesture with his hand and
then waited. Two bright points of pain prickled directly behind
Raif's eyes. Drey always waited.

Together the sons of Tern Sevrance
entered their father's tent. The body was just a few paces short of
the entrance. Tern looked as if he had been on his way out when the
broadsword cracked his sternum and clavicle, sending splinters of
bone into his windpipe, lungs, and heart. He had fallen with his
halfsword in his hand, but as with Jorry Shank, the weapon was
unbloodied.

'Broadsword again," Drey said, his
voice high and then rough as he sought to control it. "Bludd
favors them."

Raif didn't acknowledge the words. It
took all he had just to stand and look upon his father's body.
Suddenly there was too much hollow space in his chest. Tern didn't
seem as stiff as the others, and Raif stripped off his right glove
and bent to touch what was visible of his father's cheek. Cold, dead
flesh. Not frozen, but utterly cold, absent.

Pulling back as if he had touched
something scorching hot rather than just plain cold, Raif rubbed his
hand on his buckskins, wiping off whatever he imagined to be upon it.

Tem was gone.

Gone.

Without waiting for Drey, Raif pushed
aside the tent flap and struck out into the rapidly darkening camp.
His heart was beating in wild, irregular beats, and taking action
seemed the only way to stop it.

When Drey found him a quarter later,
Raif's right arm was stripped to the shoulder and blood from three
separate cuts was pouring along his forearm and down to his wrist.
Drey understood immediately. Tearing at his own sleeve, he joined his
brother as he went among the slain men. All had died without blood on
their weapons. To a clansman there was no honor in dying with a clean
blade, so Raif was taking up their weapons one by one, drawing their
blades across his skin, and spilling his own blood as a substitute.
It was the one thing the two brothers could give to their clan. When
they returned home to the roundhouse and someone asked, as someone
always did, if the men had died fighting, Raif and Drey could now
reply, "Their weapons ran with blood."

To a clansman those words mattered
dear.

So the two brothers moved around the
camp, discovering bodies in and out of tents, some with pale icicles
of urine frozen to their legs, others with hair set in spiky mats
where they had been caught bathing, a few with frozen wads of black
curds still in their mouths, and one man—Meth Ganlow—with
his beefy arms fixed around his favorite dog, protecting the wolfling
even in death. A single swordstroke had killed both man and beast.

It was only later, when moonlight
formed silver pools in the hard earth, and Tern's body was lying
beside the firepit, close to the others but set apart, that Raif
suddenly stopped in his tracks. "We never found Mace Blackhail,"
he said.

Days Darker Than Night

Ash March shot awake. Sitting up in
bed, she dragged the heavy silk sheets up over her arms and shoulders
and clutched them tight. She had been dreaming of ice again.

Taking deep breaths to calm herself,
she looked around her chamber, checking. Of the two amber lamps on
the mantel, only one was still burning. Good. That meant Katia had
not been in to refuel it. The small ball of Ash's silver blond hair
that she had pulled from her hairbrush before she slept still lay
fast against the door. So no one else had entered her chamber,
either.

Ash relaxed just a little. Her toes
formed two knobby lumps beneath the covers, and as they looked a
ridiculously long distance from her body, she wiggled them just to
check that they were hers. She smiled when they wiggled right back at
her. Toes were funny things.

The smile didn't quite take. As soon as
Ash's face muscles relaxed, the
fact
of her dream came back
to her. The sheets were twisted around her waist and they were sticky
with sweat, and the yeasty smell of fear was upon them. She'd had
another bad dream and another bad night, and it was the second in
less than a week.

Without thinking Ash brought her hand
to her mouth, almost as if she were trying to hold something in.
Despite the warmth of the chamber—the charcoal smoking in the
brazier beneath a layer of oil-soaked felt, and the hot water pipes
so diligently tended by a furnace-man and his team working three
stories below—her fingers felt icy cold. Against her will and
her very best efforts, images from the dream came back to her.
She saw a cavern with walls of black ice. A burned hand reaching
toward her, cracks between its fingers oozing blood. Dark eyes
watching, waiting…