A Cavern of Black Ice (63 page)

He let Drybone lead the flight to the
south, where Pengo and his hundred men were waiting to escort them
off the field. They would not stay and fight. The Dog Lord knew a
rout when he saw one. Bannen would not be taken this night…
and far too little Blackhail blood had been spilled.

Unsated, the Dog Lord turned for home.

By the Lake

Raif sat within the circle of light
created by the white oak fire and cut arrows. They would not be good
ones, for the wood was unseasoned and widely grained and would likely
split upon impact, but it was something to do. He had a stone warming
at the base of the fire, ready to heat and straighten the shafts when
he was done. Later, much later, he would think of sleep.

It was dark, sometime past midnight,
and moonlight came and went as the wind shifted clouds overhead.
Angus was kneeling by the bay's forelegs, rubbing them softly with a
shammy. His gloves were clotted with pine sap and blood, but he was
too caught up in tending his horse to clean or care for himself. Ash
sat on the opposite side of the fire, her face made golden by the
flames. Moose's horse blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, and
Angus' buckskin coat lay across her lap, yet neither stopped her from
shaking.

Raif had watched as she rode off the
ice, her hair sparkling with frost, her eyes fierce and full of
light. It was as if he were seeing her for the first time. Suddenly
she wasn't a skinny girl in borrowed clothes, she was a young woman
with fine shoulders and a sure way of sitting a horse. The brightness
within her had faded as they'd made their way north to the campsite.
The reality of wet clothes and aching muscles had set in, and by the
time Angus found them an hour later, Ash was crouched in the snow,
shivering. Angus had called her his "wee lassie of the ice"
and built up the fire to warm her. What destruction she had left
behind could not be known. All was hidden by the mist over the lake.

I At least two of the sept were dead.
Raif had killed one of them himself. It had been a nasty fight…
one he'd found he had little stomach for. After he'd taken two
fingers from the second red blade's sword-hand, he had shown the man
grace and let him live.

Shor Gormalin had taught him about
grace. "You must learn to recognize when a fight is won,"
the small fair-haired swordsman had said one spring morning as he'd
put Raif through his paces on the practice court. "Some wounds
will take the fight from a man as surely as a dragon breathing fire.
Others will just make him angry and want to hurt you more. The secret
is knowing the difference."

Raif remembered waiting for Shor to
continue, certain that the swordsman would tell him to be on the
lookout for spilled guts, bits of bone poking through skin, or
wounds that bled and bled and wouldn't stop. Instead Shor had said,
"The truth of it's always in your opponent's eyes. I've known
hammermen who could fight from noon to sunset with wounds the size of
rats in their chests, and I've seen swordsmen turn tail and flee with
nothing but a fine set of scratches on their necks." Shor had
raised his hand to his own neck, perhaps reassuring himself that
there were no scratches
there
. "When you've wounded
a man and looked into his eyes and seen for yourself that you've
taken the fight from him, then you must decide whether to take his
life or spare it.

"Grace is a matter between a
clansman and the Stone Gods. They give you a choice—and make no
mistake, they'll judge you for it—yet none but they know the
rights and the wrongs of it. Never assume that leaving an opponent
alive on the battlefield will gain you entrance to the Stone Halls
that lie beyond. With our gods nothing is ever certain. They damned
Bannog Tay of the Lost Clan for choosing
not
to kill his
brother at the Battle of the Verge."

Shor's words had run through Raif's
mind as he'd looked into the red blade's eyes. The man's sword was
lying in the snow alongside two fat fingers and a pool of blood.
The
fight's left him
, Raif had thought, a strange tightness pulling
at his chest, and he'd turned his horse and fled.

Raif felt that same tightness now.
Abruptly he thrust the last of his arrows into the fire and watched
as the yellow flames warped the wood then turned it black. Truth was,
he didn't really know if he'd shown grace at all, not in the way Shor
Gormalin meant, where one clansman spared another out of respect. It
had sounded good in the telling, and even Angus had nodded and said,
"That's your right, Raif, and I will not question it." Yet
Raif wondered if he hadn't spared the red blade simply to prove to
himself that he
could;
that not every fight he fought and
every arrow he loosed was destined to end in death.

Watcher of the Dead.

Raif shivered, fed another arrow to the
fire.

"Do you think Sarga Veys is dead?"
Ash's voice broke the silence of the camp like a tree snapping under
the weight of winter snow. Raif couldn't recall the last time she had
spoken, and he and Angus exchanged a small, worried glance.

Angus left the bay untethered and came
and crouched by the fire. Peeling his stained gloves from his
fingers, he said, "I will not lie to you, Ash. I have an inkling
he's still alive."

"But the ice… I saw—"

"Aye, but did you
smell
?
I heard the ice break, heard the horses scream, but I also smelled
sorcery moments later. Sarga Veys is a clever sorcerer. Powerful,
too. You may have left him to the frozen waters of the Spill, but
such a man is seldom easily killed. There are things he could have
done, bodies he could have robbed heat from, drawings he could have
made to still and stiffen the ice."

Ash looked down. After a moment she
said, "What about the Knife?"

"Marafice Eye is Penthero Iss'
right hand. Veys would be a fool to leave him to damnation. Veys
wants power in his own right, yet he knows he won't get it by
returning to Spire Vanis alone. If there was any way he
could
pull the Knife from the water, then we must assume that's exactly
what he did. I doubt very much if there's any love lost between those
two, but Sarga Veys has a high opinion of himself, one that doesn't
allow for failure."

"You know Sarga Veys?" Raif
asked.

Angus fixed Raif with his copper eyes.
"Aye, you could say that. We've crossed paths before in our
time… and I'd sooner not think on it now." It was the end
of the subject. Angus made that clear by standing and stretching and
turning his back on Ash and Raif.

Raif traced a line in the snow with the
tip of an arrow. His uncle had as many secrets as Anwyn Bird had
recipes for mutton. Always there were evasions, lines that couldn't
be crossed. After today there were more mysteries than ever. A sept
led by the Protector General of Spire Vanis had hunted them down like
game. Sorcery had been used out on the lake. Raif signed to the Stone
Gods, touching his closed eyelids and the tine at his waist. Angus
might speak casually about sorcery, but as a clansman Raif could not.
Some things were too deeply engrained. Clan was earth and stone and
mud, things that could be held in the hand and weighed. Sorcery was
air and light and tricks.

Raif sighed heavily. Sorcery had been
used in broad daylight, under an open sky. And for what? At first he
had thought Angus was the main quarry of the sept, yet the magic user
and the Knife had followed
Ash
onto the lake, not Angus.
Glancing through the yellow needlework of flames, Raif looked at Ash.
Who was she? The Surlord of Spire Vanis wouldn't send his Protector
General to track down a girl off the streets. Raif took a breath,
drawing in the warm air and gray smoke from the fire. The newly
knitted skin on his chest pulled tight as he filled his lungs. The
stitches were gone now, winkled out by Angus and his knife. The scars
left behind reminded Raif of widow's weals.

"Why did Marafice Eye come after
you?" Suddenly it seemed easier to ask than think.

The question was meant for Ash, yet
Raif saw Angus' shoulders stiffen as it was asked. For half a moment
he thought Angus would speak up and end the subject on her behalf,
but he didn't. Instead he busied himself with his gloves, scraping
away ice and pine needles with the edge of his knife.

"You think he came after me?"
Ash raised her head from her knees. A sheen of sweat glistened on her
brow, and even the smallest movements she made seemed powerless and
disjointed.

Raif was already beginning to regret
the question. Mist trapped in Ash's clothes would turn to ice through
the night. She needed fresh linens, hot food, and extra blankets—none
of which they had now that the saddlebags were gone. Angus had taken
a few things—some trail meat and medicine, as far as Raif could
tell—yet he had no clean cloth to bandage Ash's thigh and the
bay's rump, and only a splash of alcohol to clean them. Raif shook
his head. "No. It doesn't matter."

Ash looked at him with large gray eyes.
After a moment she made a small warding gesture with her hand. "It
does matter, Raif. It matters because you don't know what you're
putting yourself in danger for. Even if Marafice Eye and Sarga Veys
both died out on the lake, Penthero Iss will send more to replace
them. He wants me back… I'm his foster daughter, Asarhia
March."

It took Raif a moment to understand the
words. "The Surlord's daughter?" he repeated stupidly.

"His almost-daughter." Ash
glanced quickly at Angus.

Raif caught the look, understanding it
immediately. "You knew," he said to Angus.

Angus put down his knife. "Yes."

"And that's why you moved to save
her by the gate?"

"What do you think?"

"I think you won't tell me the
whole truth."

"Why ask, then?"

Raif pushed himself to his feet. "I
asked because I'm sick of lies, because every time I get close to the
truth, you push me away. We are blood kin, yet you do not trust me. I
have followed you blindly, trusted you blindly, yet it's Ash who
finally speaks the truth to me, not you."

"I have told you no lies, Raif
Sevrance. Be sure of that. If I have held things back, it is to
protect you. If I have kept knowledge to myself, it is because some
things are better not known. I have learned many things and gathered
many burdens. Such truths as I hold come only at a cost. What sort of
kin would I be if I passed all the horrors I have seen and all the
fears that I live with onto you? Once something is spoken it cannot
be unsaid."

Angus' voice was low and dangerous, yet
Raif hardly cared. He took a step forward. "Don't treat me like
a fool, Angus. You're content to let me share the danger when it
suits you. In the past three days I've been hunted, ridden down, and
attacked. What more has to happen before you'll speak?"

"The less you know, the safer you
are."

"Why? Who are you protecting me
from? Penthero Iss' sept seemed more than happy to slit my throat
regardless of what I knew or didn't know. No one slowed down between
blows to ask questions."

Angus shook his head. "Don't make
the mistake of supposing that you are the only person I must protect.
Some secrets are not mine to tell."

"Tell me what
is
yours to
tell, then. Why was it so important to visit Spire Vanis? What
happens when we get to Ille Glaive? How do you know Sarga Veys? And
why did you take the bow from me the moment you knew it was him? I
had a full flight of arrows. I could have shot the other six."

"And the bay," said Ash,
softly. "Who taught him how to dance upon the ice?"

Both Angus and Raif turned to look at
her. In the heat of the exchange she had been forgotten. The
Surlord's almost-daughter, cold and shivering like a child.

Angus' face softened. "The bay was
given to me as a gift. I saved a man's life once, a Sull warrior
named Mors Stormyielder. He promised me then that he would breed and
train a horse in payment. The Sull do not take such things lightly,
and the horse was many years in the breeding. Mors' pride demanded
that he send me only the best of his stock, and it took eleven years
and two generations of foals before he was satisfied that a horse
fitting his debt had been born. He spent another three years training
the horse in the Sull manner, teaching it how to hold itself steady
beneath an archer taking aim, how to survive in white weather and
keep moving through thick drifts, how to endure the sudden pains of
rocks and arrows without throwing its rider, how to war in formation
with other horses, scent trails, read snow, and dance ice. When Mors
was finished he sent the horse to me."

"Fourteen years seems a long time
to repay a debt," Ash said. "Mors was bound by his word,
not by time. The years that passed between my deed and his repayment
were nothing to him. He is Sull, he sees things differently from you
and I."

"What's the bay's name?"

The bay, as if knowing it was being
spoken of, whickered softly and stamped snow. The makeshift bandage
covering its hindquarters had already been thoroughly sniffed at,
then chewed on for good measure. "He has a Sull name, one that
can't properly be translated into Common." Angus smiled as he
saw Ash's next question, already formed, in her eyes. "
Ehl
Rhayas Erra'da Motho
. It means 'One Who Is Born for a Debt but
in the Rearing Becomes More.'" Ash smiled sleepily. "It's
easier to call him the bay."

"I see that now." She yawned.
Closing her eyes, she pulled the blanket over her chest and lay down
in the snow. "
Ehl Rhayas Erra'da Motho
," she
whispered. Then, a few minutes later, "I'm so cold."

Raif and Angus exchanged a glance. Raif
began to tug apart the ties on his elk coat. He wasn't angry at Angus
anymore. They would speak later when Ash slept—the look Angus
had given him had promised that. For now he had to look after Ash.
Walking around the fire, he braced himself for the shock of cold air
and then stripped off his coat. Frozen leaves and forest matter
crunched like glass beneath his feet. As he knelt to tuck the coat
around her shoulders, his hand brushed the side of her cheek. Her
skin was as cool as ice.