A Cavern of Black Ice (51 page)

He released the string. The arrow shot
ahead. The bow recoiled, slamming in his hand like a bird.
Thwang
.
Metal slammed against metal. Orange sparks sprayed through the
grille. Raif cried out in frustration as he watched his arrow
nosedive into the snow beyond the gate. The arrowhead had hit the
iron grating. One of its flight feathers was lodged in the grille
like elk hair on a fence.

"Aargh!"

Raif focused his gaze on the fighting
beyond the gate. The weasel man jerked his blade free of Angus'
shoulder. Blood pumped from a dark hole in Angus' buckskin coat. His
face was gray and twisted with pain. The red blades needled him,
drawing pinpricks of blood. Angus roared. Swinging in a mighty
turning circle, he severed one man's hand and sliced deeply into
another's hip.

Raif glanced down at his quiver. Four
arrows left. Seven men.
Gods help me, I can't miss another shot
.
Cursing his shaking hands, his weeping blister, and the fierce
burning in his chest, he drew the second arrow from the quiver. Angus
was slowing; his left arm was dragging and he was taking hard,
frothing breaths. Watching him, watching muscles in his cheeks pulse
with anger and some other unknowable emotion that lay between sorrow
and dread, Raif knew what he had to do. It wasn't a matter of choice
anymore. It was a matter of shared blood.

The arrow was nocked and primed in less
than an instant. Raif held it fast against the plate as he drew the
bow. The weasel man grew large in his sights, big as a giant. Raif
called
him nearer. The space between them contracted, and
then suddenly there was no space at all. Raif smelled sweat and the
secret scent of blood and waste that lay trapped beneath the skin.
Then nothing mattered but the heart.

Engorged with blood, heavy with life
force, driven by the one thing that the gods had no power over, the
heart filled Raif's sights like a glance into the sun. Things became
known to him, small things about the body that surrounded the vital,
pumping core. The weasel man's blood ran too fast, rushing through
his body like hot steam in search of release. His liver was hard and
dimpled, dark with disease, and only one testicle hung from his
groin.

This and more Raif knew in less time
than it took for a used breath to ascend from his lungs. It meant
nothing. Nothing. The heart was his.

He kissed the string and released the
arrow, and by the time his shoulders had dealt with the recoil, the
weasel man was dead. Heart-killed. His legs dropped beneath him, his
bladder failed, and he was gone.

Metal flooded Raif's mouth. A pain,
like the sickening wrench of a bone pulled from its socket, worked
its way through his chest. Is
this what I am? Cold killer of men
?

It was a question he had no time for.
Another arrow was already in his hand, though he had no memory of
drawing it, and he brought it to the plate and pulled once more upon
the string. His powers of discrimination had gone—blasted away
by pain and madness—and he set his sights on the first red
blade who crossed his plate.

The heart came to him, faster than an
eye focusing on
a
distant object. Young and strong, this
heart, with a body only lately visited by disease. Something dark
grew in the deepest underlevel of the lungs, a lobe of quiet flesh.
He spared it no thought as he released the string. The
thrum
of the arrow merged with the soft gurgle of a stopped breath, and
then another faceless body hit the snow.

Raif drew the third arrow. Pain blurred
his vision, saliva corroded his gums. On the far side of the gate,
Angus was taking advantage of the fear spreading through the
remaining men. As Raif pulled his bow, Angus slid his steel into
kidney flesh, and a red blade fell to the ground, screaming and
clutching at his gut. Behind the circle of armed men, the
black-cloaked guard in charge of the girl was beginning to panic. He
threw her onto the ground and put the point of his sword against her
neck. The girl's chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Her fingers
scratched the snow.

Even before he was aware of what he was
doing, Raif
called
the guard's heart to his sights. It
happened so quickly he barely got an impression of the man before he
released the string. The arrowhead shot through a break in the
fighting and entered the guard's heart from behind, pinning his cloak
to his spine.

Raif swayed. His head rang with pain.
Dimly he was aware of objects hitting the metal grating, as knives
and missiles were flung his way. None got through. He could see
little now, only sharp edges and glimmers of light. He saw a moving
blur that he knew to be his uncle, and three or perhaps four figures
surrounding him. His thoughts came slowly, clumsily, floating in his
mind like pieces of driftwood. One arrow, that was all he knew. One
arrow. One shot.
Must take it
.

He couldn't see, but he could
feel
.
As he drew the bow, something within him fastened on to the nearest
heart. It happened with the speed and certainty of a stone dropping
in a well… and it made Raif sick to his gut. His arms adjusted
their positions and his bowhand ceased shaking and he knew with utter
confidence the exact instant to release the string.
Dead
,
he thought dully,
gone the moment I found his heart
.

After that, someone else went down: one
of the red blades dressed in shabby stripes. Angus landed a blow that
made another man squeal like a pig. Raif swayed. Stumbling forward,
he grabbed hold of the grille for support. His eyes cleared for a
moment, and he saw Marafice Eye looking straight at him. Raif took a
breath. The Knife stood apart from his remaining men in the shadow of
the east gate tower, his eyes as pale as gristle in a piece of meat.
As Raif watched, he turned his gaze first to the girl, then to Angus
Lok, deciding what he would do. The girl was thirty paces away from
him, and even as Marafice Eye stepped toward her, Angus moved to
block his path.

Raif felt himself failing. With his
last scrap of strength, he focused his eyes hard on Marafice Eye,
holding the man in his sights,
willing
him to turn and look.
When the Knife shifted his gaze and their eyes met, Raif released his
hand from the grille and reached down toward the quiver at his waist.
In that moment Marafice Eye
knew
he was going to be shot,
heart-killed like four of his men. Raif saw the realization in the
man's eyes, saw the understanding that he could not reach the girl
before the arrow reached him and that it was better to withdraw than
die. As Raif's hand closed around fresh air, Marafice Eye barked an
order and fled.

Raif's legs collapsed beneath him, and
he slid down to a place where the walls were formed from darkness and
the edges creased with pain.

The Gods Lights

There were twelve secret uses for whale
blubber, and this night Eloko, widow to Kulahuk and mother to Nolo
and Avranna, had promised to show Sadaluk one of them. Eloko was
a fine woman, with teeth as tiny as a baby's and the belly of a fat
snow bear. She was not young, but Sadaluk was not fussy about that.
When a tribeswoman offered comfort to an old man, it was something to
be celebrated, not picked apart like a whale carcass after a kill.
Eloko had been widowed for ten months, and it was fitting that she
had chosen to break mourning with an elder of the tribe. It showed
respect. The Ice God could not fault her for that.

The Listener permitted himself to think
about Eloko and her plentiful supply of whale blubber for only a
short while longer. Eloko had waited ten months. Sadaluk himself had
waited that and more. It would do neither of them much harm to stand
at opposite sides of the village, one in a house made of driftwood
and clay and the other in a ground dug from hard earth and braced
with whalebone, and watch the Gods Lights for a few hours more.

The sky was clear tonight, dark and
brilliant as the hole in the center of a man's eye. The Gods Lights
raged to the north like flames from a wildfire burning beyond the
horizon. Pink and green, the lights flashed, the colors of all living
things. Every winter the Gods Lights unfurled like banners in the
clear night sky. Their slow, languid movements reminded Sadaluk of
seaweed floating in deep water, limbs unfurling with the grace of
weightless things. If you listened very hard, you could hear them.
The noise sounded like the cracking and ripping of wind in the sails
of a ship. Some said it was the same noise you heard before you died,
but Sadaluk did not know about that.

He did know that the lights were a
message from the gods.
Look at us
, they proclaimed.
See
how beautiful and terrible we are. See how we come to you in full
winter, when your sons and daughters need us the most.

It was impossible to look upon the
northern lights and deny the presence of the gods. Lootavek, the one
who had listened before him, said that the Ice Trappers would know
when the end of the world was coming, as the lights would burn red.
"The gods will give us warning," he said one night as they
camped on the sea ice, butchering seals. "They will send us a
sky filled with blood."

Sadaluk remembered looking down at his
own wet and bloody hands and asking, "How do you know this?"

Lootavek had given him one of his
looks. "You ask the wrong question, Sadaluk. How is not
important, it is the
why
that counts."

"Why, then?"

"So that we will be the first to
know."

Sadaluk had finished the butchering in
silence, not really understanding what the Listener meant but
unwilling to ask any more questions. He had been young then, in awe
of the Listener, as was right and proper for a young hunter in the
tribe. Now, tonight, watching the Gods Lights dance in the northern
skies, he wished he had asked more. The lights seemed darker than he
remembered them, the pinks deeper, the greens flickering and
strangely distorted. Sometimes he thought he saw flashes of red in
the farthest reaches of the corona. It's
nothing
, he told
himself.
There have always been streaks of red in the lights.

But surely tonight there were more?

Frowning at the wildness of his own
thoughts, he turned his back on the sky and entered his ground. Eloko
would be getting impatient and might yet close the door in his face.
A woman's pride was a fierce thing, and making her wait was one
thing, but making her wait too
long
was quite another. And
it would be good to feel warm arms around his back and the touch of
another's hands on his face.

Why, then, could he not get Lootavek's
voice out of his head? So
that we will be the first to know
.
There had been pride in that statement, Sadaluk realized that now.
Ice Trappers were always the first to know. "We live on the
edge of the world," Lootavek had said another time, during
summer, when swarms of blackflies formed clouds in the sky and even
the dogs stayed indoors. "We pay a great price in hunger and
death, and for this we bear the messages of the gods. We are closest
to them, Sadaluk. Never forget that. After I am gone, you must listen
to your dreams and wait for the messages to come."

Sadaluk tsked. If he were a sane man,
he would be reaching for his bear coat and gloves; he would march
across the village and take himself quickly to Eloko's door. An offer
had been made, and a short walk would secure it, and he would be an
ice-rotted fool if he let the opportunity pass. But he wasn't sane,
and the Gods Lights worried him, and thirty days and thirty nights
had passed and still Black Claws had failed to home. The Listener did
not think the raven would be coming back. The thought pained him, for
he had loved Black Claws the most, and the idea of the raven lying
dead on some glaciated cirque or frozen lake was upsetting in strange
new ways. Had he been attacked by other birds or the hand of man? Had
he delivered his message before he went down, or had the small strip
of spruce bark fallen into unwelcome hands? The Listener shook his
unease away.
It's only a raven
, he told himself.
One
less bird to find scraps for through the long winter's night.

Stretching his hard old hands upon the
door frame, he prepared to go inside. It was high time that another
message was sent. The Old Blood had to be told that the dance of
shadows had begun. They must send Far Riders to him and make bid upon
the future and stand upon the sea ice and see the Gods Lights for
themselves.

Pulling a strip of birch bark from a
peg near his door, Sadaluk took one last look at the sky. Red, he
saw, a world flickering red.

*** Iron chains rattled. Metal groaned.
Feet thudded over compacted snow. "Drink. Drink."

Raif instinctively shied away from the
cold, stinging fumes that rose from a nozzle thrust toward his face.
He did not want to drink.

Fingers, neither clean nor fragrant,
thrust themselves into his mouth, forcing his jaw apart. Liquid was
poured. A moment passed while the open cavity of his mouth was
filled, and then the liquid streamed down his throat. Raif gasped and
spluttered and raised his head. Spitting, he cleared his mouth of the
foulness.

Angus frowned at him. "You must
drink your fill, lad. I know it tastes like lamp fuel, but I swear it
will do you good."

Raif glanced around. The sun had sunk
behind the mountain, and the sky was dark and silvery, transforming
itself into night. He was lying in soft snow by the gate. The grating
had been raised, and six bodies lay in the plowed field of blood,
mud, and slush on the other side. His hand rose to feel for his raven
lore. The horn was as smooth as a pulled tooth, hotter than his skin.
He drank more of the liquid. Already he felt his body working,
tingling, as if it had been whipped with dry birches. His mind
sharpened. Suddenly he realized that Angus was wounded; blood was
gouting from a hole in his buckskins. Raif began to rise.