A Cavern of Black Ice (31 page)

"Raif. Craw. Cover us as we go
down. Once we're there, move closer and shoot as you judge safe."
Drey's voice was rough. His gloved hands pressed against the leather
mount of his hammer. "Do not show yourselves. Bull, Bitty.
You're with me."

Raif barely had time to nod before his
brother turned his horse and cantered down the slope. Bullhammer and
Bitty Shank flanked him. Bullhammer tore the oilskin from his back as
he descended, revealing his iron-banded breastplate and freeing his
arms for the powerful hammer moves that had earned him his name.

Raif pulled a second arrow from his
case. Below, the war wagon lurched backward as one of its rear wheels
rolled off the road. Saplings snapped like chair backs as the wagon
tumbled into the newgrowth, sending a wedge of flames and sparks
shooting into the branches. The drayman worked the team, lashing
horseflesh with his whip, but the wagon was trapped in the ditch.
Raif could see the outline of the wagon door and the great metal
stave that held it shut. As he watched, he saw the door shake, as if
someone inside were pushing against it.

A bowstring hummed to Raif's left as
Craw Bannering let an arrow fly, shooting at a swordsman who had
moved forward to intercept Drey and his crew. The shot was sound,
catching the swordsman high in the neck, dropping him where he stood.
Bludd hammermen fought around him, their sable cloaks fluid as
running oil, their hammers breaking up the last of the mist. Raif
drew his bow, waited for a clear shot at one of them. His
concentration was not good. Red and black, the angry blaze of the war
wagon kept catching his eye. The door continued to shake, yet still
no one broke out.

Almost without thinking, Raif dipped
his bow, aiming his arrowhead at the wagon door. Imagining it was
game to be shot, he
called
the wagon to him. A seam of hot
pain shot between his eyes as he forced his sights to focus
beyond
the door. It was like staring into the mist all over again. His eyes
ached. Seconds of blankness passed, then just as he was about to drop
his bow, he felt the wild thumping of many hearts. Terror filled his
mouth like blood.

Trapped. They were trapped inside the
war wagon. Heat had sealed the iron bolt in place.

Shaking with the force of their terror,
Raif let his bow fall slack. A sour metallic taste ringed his mouth.
Glancing at Craw, he saw the black-haired bowman braced to take a
second shot. With a furtive, close-body movement, Raif switched
arrows, choosing a thick-bladed hunter shaped to take down a horse in
a single strike. The weight was wrong for a bow the size and shape of
Raif's—he kept it only to shoot from Drey's longbow—yet
he raised it to the plate all the same. If he was careful and he drew
enough power into the bow, it just might go where he planned.

It took him less than a moment to sight
the bow. The last ropes of mist felt like a noose around his neck as
he searched for the line between the tip of his arrow and the iron
bolt of the war wagon. The belly of the bow shook along with his
hands. He didn't dare think, didn't dare question what he was doing
and why. The memory of the hell inside the wagon was too great. The
line calmed him. Once it was fixed in his mind, his hands stilled.
Gentle as a breath taken in sleep, he released the string.

The arrow split curls of fire and smoke
as it raced toward its mark. Even from where he stood, Raif heard the
harsh clang of metal striking metal. The arrow hit, then dropped. A
moment was lost to smoke, and when Raif caught sight of the door once
more, someone inside was beating hard against it. After three blows,
the iron bolt gave and the door blasted open. Smoke poured out.

Raif tugged a hand across his face. He
had no way of knowing if his arrow had done the job, yet strangely it
did not matter. The door was open, and even as he looked on, people
began clambering out. Hands held to their faces, backs bent, they
coughed and screamed and ran.

It took Raif a moment to realize they
were women and children.

He didn't believe it at first. This was
supposed to be a war party-Mace Blackhail had said so. What business
did children have with war? Yet even as he groped for a reasonable
explanation, he began to realize there had been a mistake. This was
no war party. The quad of heavily armed hammermen, the foreriders
with their case-hardened spears, and the swordsmen with their blades
of blue steel were here solely to guard the wagon. The Dog Lord
wasn't moving troops to the Dhoonehouse, he was moving women and
children.

And Mace Blackhail knew it.

The thought seized his mind so swiftly,
it was almost as if someone had spoken it out loud. No one had
questioned how Mace Blackhail had come upon the information for this
ambush. Corbie Meese said he'd picked it up from stovehouse talk, yet
how could anyone other than a Bluddsman know about the Dog Lord's
plans? Most especially when those plans concerned the moving of kin?
Raif shook his head. All possible answers left him cold.

"Raif!
Children
."
Craw Bannering nudged his bow arm.

Raif nodded, feeling a bite of
disloyalty as he feigned seeing the open wagon door for the first
time. "We'd better get down there."

The snow on the road was red and pink
with blood. Four horses had fallen, two others fled. Toady Walker's
body had been trampled facedown into the snow. Banron Lye lay in a
ditch just off the road. He wasn't moving. Dogs sank their teeth into
his collar and sleeves, tearing away great strips of elkskin to get
at flesh. All the remaining Hails-men, including Bailie and his
bowmen, were now fighting hand-to-hand on the open road. Black blood
and spittle frothed from Corbie Meese's mouth, yet judging from the
volume of his screams and the swift circles he cut with his hammer,
he wasn't badly hurt.

Drey and Bullhammer had wasted no time
driving themselves into the middle of the melee. They worked well
together, their hammers as dull and ashen as charred logs, as they
moved to outflank a Bludd swordsman who had just lost his mount. The
spearmen were the worst danger. Fighting in tight formation
back-to-back, they made it impossible for anyone to get near them for
a blow.

Reining his horse thirty feet above the
road, Raif pulled an arrow from his case. The dogs worrying Banron
Lye were the first things to go. They were easy targets; once he had
their hearts in his sights he didn't worry about hitting Banron or
any other clansman by mistake. Down the dogs went, one after another,
legs crumpling beneath them in the manner of all heart-killed beasts.
The Bludd spearmen were a more difficult problem. Guarding the
drayman and his team, they formed a knot of grizzled steel at the
center of the road. Raif couldn't get a clear shot at any of them.
Corbie Meese and Rory Gleet were too close.

Sweat slid down Raif's neck. The war
wagon roared with flames, melting the surrounding snow with snake
hisses, dripping yellow fire onto the undergrowth, and setting whole
runs of stone pines alight. Fire poured along the team's harness, and
the drayman began hacking at the leather traces with his sword to
free the horses. Raif could no longer see what was happening at the
back of the wagon. Out of the corner of his eye, he was aware of
people running to high ground through the trees.

It was hard to focus on the spearmen,
harder still to call them to him in the split seconds when the way
was clear. He loosed one arrow and it went wide, glancing off a
Bluddsman's hammerguard. Cursing, he tried to control the fast
beating of his heart. Rory Gleet howled as a spear ripped along his
thigh. For a moment Raif saw white lines of bared sinew and bone,
then blood welled over Rory's flesh and everything turned red. Face
pale and shiny with sweat, hand pressed to the wound, Rory wheeled
his horse.

Raif drew his bow, ready to let an
arrow loose the moment Rory broke free and cleared the way. The
spearman who had inflicted the wound moved forward for a second blow.
He was armed for heavy marching, not for war, and wore a breastpiece
of elkhide boiled in wax. His leather-bound topnotch swung like a
sling as Raif caught his heart in his sights. A strong heartbeat
slammed against his mind, shocking like a physical blow, knocking all
thoughts clean away. Raif didn't need them: His eye knew to hold the
target and his fingers knew when to release the string, and it was
over in less than an instant.

Nausea bent him double as the spearman
fell. His vision blurred, and sour acids from his stomach burned his
throat. He lost his grip on the bow and let it drop to the snow
beneath him, not trusting himself to rock sideways and catch it as it
fell.

He shook his head, concentrated hard on
keeping his seat. Killing men wasn't the same as game. He could do
it, but it wasn't the same. "Sevrance! Pick up your bow and ride
down the survivors! Now.'" Raif flinched at the harshness of the
voice. It sounded as if it were coming from behind him, but he knew
now wasn't a good time to turn in the saddle and look. It took all he
had to sit his horse.

A horse and rider bore down through the
pines. Raif saw a hail of kicked-up snow, then felt something jab
against the base of his spine. "I
said
, go and run down
the survivors."

Mace Blackhail. The new-made Hail
chief.
Here
? Raif's thoughts came in clumsy lumps. How had
he managed to catch up?

"Craw. Go and pull Drey and Bitty
from the road. I need all three of you to ride east through the woods
and pick off survivors. I'll have no Bludd breeders and bitches
walking free from this ambush. Now go."

Raif spat to clean the metal from his
mouth as Craw Bannering headed down the slope. Pulling himself to his
full saddle height, he turned to look at the Wolf. Mace Blackhail's
eyes were the color of frozen urine, his lips a hook of pale flesh.
Wearing a cloak of slate gray fisher fur over a mail coat inset with
wolf teeth, he sat high atop the blue roan, contemplating Raif. After
a moment his jaws sprang apart. "I am your chief. You have taken
First Oath. Do my bidding."

Raif flinched. He wished his thoughts
were clearer. As he reached down to collect his bow, Mace Blackhail
kicked the roan forward, ramming the filly's belly and trampling
Raif's bow underfoot. The filly caught the sharp end of a spur along
her shoulder and reared up, squealing in pain. Raif fought to keep
his seat, pulling hard on the horse's mouth. By the time he had
calmed her, the blue roan had stamped the bow into splinters.

"I've changed my mind," Mace
said, starting down the slope. "Use your halfsword on the
runaways instead."

Raif watched him go. The edges of his
vision were blurred, and he could still feel the spearman's heartbeat
rattling away inside his skull.

As soon as Mace Blackhail reached the
road, he began working to take control of the battle. He moved
quickly, and although he wasn't a powerful fighter like Corbie Meese,
Bullhammer, or Drey, he was clever with his sword. Within a minute he
had taken down one of the three remaining spearmen.

Drey and Bitty were slow to pull off
the road, both clearly unhappy at the order to hunt down runaways.
Seeing them move into the trees, Raif kicked the filly after them. He
didn't spare a glance for his ruined bow. It was a relief to have it
gone.

The war wagon collapsed inward as Raif
rode past it, sucking air from his lungs. The heat was fierce. Bits
of flaming matter floated through the stone pines like wasps. Trees
shivered as they passed. One of the Bludd dogs ran across the filly's
path, howling and frothing at the mouth, its black-and-orange coat
alight. Raif found its pain surprisingly easy to ignore. He hardly
knew what he was doing. Thoughts came and then slipped from his head,
and no matter how many times he swallowed and spat, the copper taint
of blood stayed in his mouth.

He nearly rode past the first woman.
Pressed against the trunk of an oldgrowth pine, she held still until
almost the last moment, then lost her nerve and broke into a run. If
she hadn't moved, he would not have seen her. A long braid of golden
hair thumped against her back as she sprinted away from the road. Her
cloak was dark red with gold stitching around the hem, and her
leather softboots had been sewn and dyed to match. She ran fast but
straight, failing to take advantage of the trees, and the filly soon
outpaced her. Raif drew Tern's half-sword. "You have it,"
Drey had said that first evening when they'd returned to the
roundhouse. "I have his coat and his lore. It's only fitting you
have his sword."

Raif rode the woman down. The thrill of
the chase woke something in him, and he cut the air with his sword,
growing accustomed to its balance and reach. A drift of new snow
collapsed beneath the woman's weight as she stepped across a shallow
draw, causing her to sink and lose her footing. Hearing the filly
closing distance, she turned to face man and horse. Long strands of
golden hair had worked free of her braid, framing a face hot with
fright and exertion.

Seeing her, Raif realized she wasn't a
woman at all, just a girl, a year or so younger than he himself. Her
pale eyes widened as he raised his sword. Shivering in small bursts,
she brought a hand to her throat as he approached. A deer lore was
fastened about her neck on a strip of birch bark. Her knuckles were
black with soot and smoke.

Tern's sword grew heavy in Raif's hand.
Girls at home used birch bark for their lores. It was said to bring
luck in finding a husband.

The girl shrank back, closing her fist
around her lore. She had a small dimpled scar above her lip, the sort
of mark that was left by a dog bite. When she noticed Raif's gaze
upon it, her hand moved to cover it up.

Raif knew then that he would not kill
her. She was too much like the girls at home, thinking that whenever
someone looked at her it was always to find fault. Ridiculously, the
scar made him want to kiss her.