A Cavern of Black Ice (30 page)

Bitty Shank was the swordsman. Like all
the Shanks, he had a face that looked cooked. Although he was the
same age as Drey, his fair hair had already started to thin. Bitty
swung between tarring down his hair to prevent further loss and
vigorously tugging at what little remained to show how little he
cared. He was in the devil-may-care frame of mind at the moment, but
come spring and wenching season, there'd be tar in his waxing pouch
again.

When the mist cleared enough to allow
snatched glimpses of the Bluddroad, Drey raised an arm, gesturing all
behind to slow. The path he chose became more elaborate, involving
great doglegs and double-backs as he worked to bring them down the
slope out of view of the road. Oldgrowth paper birches, with their
long branchless trunks and high crowns, didn't provide the best
cover, and bushes and ground birch were scant.

As Drey guided them toward a cluster of
newgrowth two hundred feet above the road, Raifs stomach muscles
began to clench. The two main parties would be in place now, waiting
just off the road to ambush Clan Bludd. Raif had grown up listening
to tales of Clan Bludd—their fierceness in battle, their swords
cut with a central groove for channeling their enemies' blood, their
terrible deafening war cries, and their weapons so heavily leaded
that no non-Bluddsman could raise them—yet he had never seen a
Bluddsman up close. To him they were the stuff of legend, like the
people who were said to live in whalebone huts in the frozen North,
or the Maimed Men who ranged across in the Want and were scarred by
terrible beasts and crippling frosts.

Drey called halt so softly it was like
listening to a thought. Raif reined his horse along with the others.
Beckoning everyone close, Drey positioned the entire party behind a
dense growth of yearling pines. The Bluddroad lay below them, dark
and straight like a fault in the earth. Raif looked west but could
see no sign of the other parties. Bailie and his team must have
doubled back before crossing, to prevent hoofprints and scent on the
road.

As Raif looked up, he caught a glimpse
of his brother's face. Drey's eyes were two frozen points on his
face. Seeing them, recognizing the one emotion that lay behind them,
Raif felt his bones turn to ice. Drey wasn't waiting to fight
Bluddsmen; he was waiting to slay the men who killed his da.

There was nothing to do but wait.
Minutes passed, then an hour, then another, then they had to cut the
sheepskin muffles from the horses to prevent them from becoming
agitated. Then, just as Bullhammer reached back in the saddle to
fetch a feed bag for his restless stallion, a low rumbling sounded in
the east.

Everyone tensed. Bullhammer
straightened his back, took his reins in both hands. Bitty Shank
stripped the mitts from his swordhand, revealing fingerless gloves
beneath. Craw Bannering pressed thin lips together and turned his
cool archer's eyes to the road. Drey made no bid for his hammer.
Glancing back at his men, he sent one word with his eyes.
Easy
.

The sound grew louder and began to
separate into recognizable parts. Horses' hooves, too many to number,
thumped down upon the hard surface of the road. Bushes and tree limbs
cracked like whips, dumping their loads of snow. Dogs yipped and
barked, carts creaked, harness metal jingled, and above it all
something lurched, clattered, and shuddered like a great and terrible
engine of war. Raif and Drey exchanged a glance. The mist was as
stringy as rotten cobwebs. It was hard to get a clear view of the
road, almost impossible to see the bend the Bludd party would round
any moment.

A pair of snow geese took flight from
the near side of the bend, their calls harsh as saws drawn over
metal. Raif's whole being was focused on controlling his horse. Her
ears were flicking, and she had begun to pull on the reins. The scent
of strange dogs made her nervous. Raif found himself wishing he were
on Moose, not some flighty filly borrowed from Longhead at the last
moment.

All thoughts evaporated from his mind
as a gust of wind shifted the mist, allowing a clear view of the
Bludd party as they rounded the bend below. Tiny hooks of fear
pierced Raif's chest. Dark and full of purpose, the Bludd party took
the road as if it were territory to be claimed like a foreign shore
or an enemy camp. Riding stallions as thick necked and muscular as
wolves, the foreriders held spears of black steel couched in horn
casings that hung from the saddles along with their stirrups.
Bull-headed dogs raced ahead of them, black and orange like
hellhounds. A supply cart came into view, then a second one loaded
with iron-banded kegs. Raif strained to see more, but mist poured
down the slope, resettling in the lowest points. Briefly he snatched
a glimpse of a team of horses flanked by a quad of heavily armed
hammermen.

The grinding, shuddering noise became
deafening. White smoke gouted in the air above the road. With one
single fluid movement, Drey pulled his hammer from its sling. Raif
noticed the metal had been abraded with steel wire. As he looked up,
he met eyes with his brother. Drey looked so much like Tern for a
moment that Raif felt his hand leave his bow and reach out.

Easy
, Drey said without
speaking.
Easy now
.

Feeling foolish and confused, Raif
worked to conceal his emotions. He returned his hand to his bow and
nocked his arrow against the plate.
We are Clan Blackhail, the
first of all clans. We do not cower and we do not hide, and we will
have our revenge
. The oldest version of the Blackhail boast ran
through Raif's mind as he sighted his arrow. Angry words. And not for
the first time, he wondered what had prompted them.

The Bludd party was directly below them
now. The team of horses pulled some sort of lurching contraption that
was partially obscured by mist. Raif counted seconds. The screech of
wheel axles turning in their housings set his nerves on edge. The
cold weighed on his bladder, making him painfully aware of its
fullness. Looking ahead, he thought he saw a sliver of steel in the
young growth to the far side of the road. Bailie's crew.

The Bludd dogs yelped and brayed,
running rings around the trotting horses in their eagerness to be on
their way. As the lead dog found something to sniff at on the road's
north verge, the surrounding mist switched like a horse's tail,
allowing Raif a clear view of the team and its load.

Breath hissed softly in his throat. The
size
of the thing. A team of horses pulled a war wagon as
big as a house, with iron-spined wheels as tall as men and whole elm
trunks for sides. The wheels plowed into the road, churning up mounds
of dirt and snow. Great gasps of smoke vented from a copper chimney
fitted high into the timbered roof, and the entire structure huffed
and shuddered with every rut in the road. Raif had never seen
anything like it in his life. It was like watching an entire
roundhouse on the move.

"Raif. Pull out your flint."
Drey's voice was as low and ragged as the mist. "Bull. Hand him
the hard liquor from your pack. Easy now. All of you."

Raif understood at once. No one had
been expecting this thing, this cart as big as a building. No one
knew what horrors were housed within it. The only thing to do was set
it alight. Bailie the Red and Corbie Meese were probably thinking the
same thing, but just in case they weren't, or just in case they
missed, Drey was making plans. Raif tore the thumb from his left mitt
and used it as a hood for his arrow. Bull-hammer handed him a silver
flask, his meaty hands warming the metal where he touched.

As Raif doused the thumbpiece in the
clear amber-colored liquor, the lead dog caught whiff of the ambush
parry's scent. Its joyous yelping turned to a low, dangerous growl.
Raif felt the sound echo in the soft inner tissue of his bones, then
all hell broke loose on the road.

A salvo of arrows cut low through the
mist, aimed for the foreriders' mounts. Animals squealed in terror as
metal broadheads, barbed for lightness and snagging flesh, punctured
horseflesh. Rearing up, they kicked and bucked, thrashing their heads
from side to side and screaming. Their fear spread through the
remaining Bludd animals like wildfire, yet even as other horses began
to whiffle and stamp, their riders and draymen worked to calm them. A
word spoken softly but firmly, a steadying hand on a neck or a
shoulder, a squeeze with the thighs, and the Bluddsmen saved their
mounts from panic.

The foreriders were quick to abandon
their wounded horses, dismounting with heavy grace. Thudding onto the
snow, they drew their ten-foot spears from their couching. All
escaped injury, though with four massive horses kicking and screaming
in the confined space of the road, it hardly seemed possible. Raif
had no time to think on that before Corbie Meese, Toady Walker, and
eight other hammermen blasted onto the road. Screaming at the top of
their lungs, they rode wide of the standing spearmen, driving for the
hammermen behind. As soon as they were clear of the spearmen, a
second salvo of arrows shot north across the road. Most hit the
panicking horses, spraying horse blood in red arcs, but one spearman
took an arrow to his shoulder, and another lost a piece of his face.
The injuries caused neither man to break formation, and as a single
unit the four spearmen turned to pursue Corbie and his crew as they
met steel with the Bludd hammermen. It was, Raif realized, the only
possible thing they could do. Standing free like that, they were a
bowman's prayer, but no bowman in the territories would shoot an
arrow into a fray where his own men were fighting.

Raif worked at the alcohol-soaked
thumbpiece, pulling it down so the metal point of the arrowhead
peeked through at the tip. The screams of the horses were terrible to
hear, and Raif tried to cut them from his mind. He had known all
along that Bailie and his crew would target horses first.

"Raif. Shoot." Drey. No
mention of what he was to shoot or why, no caution concerning taking
such a shot at such a distance. Just an order. No—Raif
positioned the flint and striker in his hand—it was more than
that. By saying the little that he did, Drey assumed not only that
his younger brother knew his mind, but also that he was capable of
making such a shot without injuring Corbie or one of his men.

It was a sobering thought. Raif tipped
the hooded arrow on an angle to catch sparks and struck the
flintstone. The alcohol on the thumbpiece ignited with a soft ripping
sound that distressed the filly. Raif didn't have to worry about
stilling her, as Drey was already at her head, leaning over to calm
her with soft words and gentle scratches.

Raising the flaming arrow to his bow,
Raif switched his mind to the battle below. The remaining hammermen
and swordsmen from both Corbie's and Bailie's parties were now
fighting on level ground. Corbie Meese screamed at the top of his
lungs as he whirled his hammer in a liquid circle above his head, his
face purple with rage, his stewed leather gauntlets butcher red with
blood. He was, Raif realized with a stab of quiet pride, a truly
terrifying sight. It was the hammer dent on his head that did it. The
Bluddsmen danced around him, reluctant to go hammer to hammer against
a man who had taken such a blow and lived.

With a ghost of a smile on his face,
Raif aimed his bow. The war wagon was a large and barely moving
target. If it hadn't been for the mist and the men fighting about it,
it would have been an easy shot. Raif took a breath, relaxed his grip
on the bow, decided upon the upper quarter of the wagon wall as his
target, then felt for the still line that would lead the arrow home.
He did not reach inside the thing. The wagon was dead wood, and there
was no question of calling it to him—after the day at the lick,
he knew and accepted that now. To try to find its heart was a mistake
that would cost him both accuracy and time.

Everything slipped away. The string
creaked with strain, a good sound that brought saliva to Raif's
mouth. The flames from the thumb-piece licked at his cheek. A second
stretched to breaking. Then, suddenly, the mist cleared, the riders
parted, and the line between the target and the bow became as broad
and inviting as an open road. Raif lifted his fingers from the
string, and the arrow shot toward its mark.

Hearing the soft
thuc
of the
bowstring, feeling the rough hand of the recoil snap at his fingers,
Raif knew he had been wrong. There was life in the wagon, inside it,
and for a brief moment as the bowstring whipped air and his eye held
the target, he felt hearts beating from within. Dozens of them.
Racing and skipping with fear.

You
can't call an arrow back
.
That was the first thing Tem had ever taught him about shooting, and
Raif finally knew what he meant. A bowman delivered his blow the
moment his fingers left the string, not seconds later when the arrow
sank its barbs into enemy flesh. The small distinction had never
meant anything to him. Until now.

The sound of the impact didn't carry,
but the flames blanket-rolled across the wagon wall, changing color
from blue to yellow as they spread. The shot was perfectly placed,
the alcohol fire hot enough to kindle hardwood, and the arrowhead sat
snug between two elm logs, driving the flames deep. Even the wind
helped, gusting along the wagon like air from a bellows. Within a
minute the entire upper portion of the wagon was alight. Sheets of
yellow flame rippled over the wood, spilling between cracks like
molten metal and belching black, greasy smoke.

The flaming of the war wagon had a
profound effect on the Bludds men. The drayman riding the team worked
frantically to turn the horses, whipping and hollering, standing on
his plate and smacking the horses' rumps. Bludd hammermen and
spearmen moved into position around the wagon, defending its team and
driver with hard focused force. Toady Walker fell from his horse as a
lead-weighted hammer smacked into his spine. Within seconds a Bludd
spearman had moved in to spike his guts.