A Cavern of Black Ice (80 page)

Raif knew Cluff Drybannock by
reputation—all clansfolk did. He was the Dog Lord's right hand,
his fostered son, a fatherless Trench-land bastard who was named
after the first meal he had eaten at Clan Bludd: dry bread. Now he
was known to all as Drybone. He was the only man the Dog Lord
trusted, people said, the only one who could speak and fight in his
likeness. And he was the best longswordsman in the North.

A rasping noise broke the quiet of
slow-moving water as the boat's keel scraped against granite pebbles
on the Inch's shore. The oarsmen raised their oars and waded into the
river to haul the body of the skiff ashore. Cluff Drybannock worked
with the men as one of the team, the tail ends of his hair floating
in the animal-scented water as he shouldered his portion of the
weight.

Raif looked up at the vast five-sided
tower that had been standing since before the clanholds were settled.
Algae, mud, and mineral stains ringed the tower's lower chambers,
each ring marking high water levels of ancient floods. The stench of
the river clung to the stone, hiding in pockmarks and clefts in the
granite. Ice, colored green and orange by rust, hung in storm-broken
fingers from the tower's ledges, overhangs, and mooring rings.

The skipper tied the skiff to the
nearest ring and then fell in line with the oarsmen, awaiting Cluff
Drybannock's word.

Time passed. Cluff Drybannock stood,
half-in, half-out the water, watching the red fire burn thirty
stories above him. Weariness was a hard presence on his face, and
Raif wondered what it had taken for him and his men to capture
Ganmiddich's roundhouse and hold.

Finally the Bluddsman spoke, his vivid
blue eyes not once leaving the light of the fire. "Take him
inside and beat him."

The words were heavily said, and the
six oarsmen and the skipper reacted to the tone of their leader's
voice by moving slowly and silently about their task.

Raif felt large cool hands grasp his
shoulders, ankles, and wrists.

Somewhere ahead, an iron door creaked
open, and for the first time that night Raif felt his stomach betray
him by clenching in fear. Chains rattled as he was lifted from the
stench and dampness of the skiff. Fresh air skimmed across his face,
but the ropes at his nose and throat stopped him from inhaling
deeply. The Bluddsmen's breaths came short and ragged as they hauled
him inside the tower.

Inside all was as still and dark as a
mineshaft. Wet mud sucked at the Bluddsmen's boots. Leaking moisture
dropped like slow rain on their backs. The smell of the river was
concentrated to a thick stock of meat, minerals, and mud. Smoke
filtering down from the Bludd Fire provided the only relief from the
stench. Raif watched stone ceilings pass above him as he was carried
into the tower's heart. He thought perhaps they would take him
upward, but they bore him down instead.

Mud turned to wet slime and then thick,
blood-colored water as they descended. No one spoke. No tallow was
lit to guide the way. Thin shavings of dawn light came from sources
Raif could neither identify nor see. River sounds filled his senses.
Even in winter, when the water was thick with suspended ice and
sluggish with cold undertows, its current throbbed against the watch
tower like a stallion's heart. All around water trickled and dripped,
poured and rushed, making the tower echo like a sea cave.

A second door opened. Water sloshed
around the Bluddsmen's ankles, then Raif was thrown to the ground.
His shoulder and temple struck hard stone. Water filled his mouth and
nose. The rope at his throat was suddenly tight enough to choke him.
Someone said, "Cut him free," and cool blades licked his
skin.

Raif saw pale edges: a curved endwall,
the lip of a stone bench, a square grille overhead that let in a
keyhole's worth of light. River water, foul smelling and turgid with
algae and gelatinous strings of animal matter, formed a shin-high
pool above the floor. Raif had no time to take in more details before
the first blow was struck.

Pain exploded in his head, streaking
the world white and gray and filling his mouth with hot blood. Other
blows followed, swift, well placed, each one a hard wedge in the soft
belly of his flesh. Bluddsmen grunted. Water rode high against the
walls, spraying the cell like a ship's prow in a storm. Raif rose and
fell with the waves, grasping water, then air, fingers scrambling for
handholds in the stone.

His jaws clenched and unclenched as he
accepted the Bluddsmen's blows. Boot tips hammered at his spine.
Knuckles found the same places in his ribs… again and again,
like a machine. Boot heels were thrust below the water level, seeking
out the hidden tissue of thighs and groin. Raif thrashed like a
hooked fish, knowing the same terror and confusion. Pain tore at his
senses, causing him to breathe water and swallow air. Still the blows
came, so many kicks and punches that soon they could not be separated
or counted. Hard dots of white light burned in place of his vision.
Vomit blocked his nasal cavity and flooded in and out of his mouth
like driftwood carried on the tide.

Soon he lost all sense of where he was
and what was happening. Blows and dealing with the pain of them were
all he knew. Water buoyed but did not cool him. His back was afire,
stripped of skin and bleeding acid in place of blood. His stomach
contracted in hard waves, yet each time he tried to raise his knees
to his chest to soothe the cramping, he was beaten below the water…
held under by booted feet.

He lost time. Slaps revived him. A
half-closed fist thudded against his chest, forcing water from his
lungs. Fingers found his raven lore, twisted it round and round until
the twine that held it was like a garrote against his throat.
Breathing was impossible…

More time lost. Through closed eyes he
judged an increase in light. His eyelids were gummed together—whether
by blood, mucus, or swollen tissue, he did not know. His throat
burned. Breathing caused excruciating pain. A voice grunted words he
could no longer understand, then something that could only have been
a human hand pressed against his skull, forcing his head under the
water once more.

When he came to again he was no longer
in the water. Hard stone dug into his spine and ribs. His clothes
were sodden. Daylight was gone. People were gone. He was alone in the
darkness with his pain.

Hours passed before he could work up
the strength to move his right hand. He wasted nothing of himself by
trying to open the bruised flaps of flesh that were eyelids or lick
lips that were so dry that a single breath exhaled through the mouth
could cause them to crack and bleed. Everything within him he put
toward raising his hand to his throat.

Pain made him pass out more than once.
Sour matter in his mouth stung his gums. The desire for water, just a
few clear drops, was strong. But the desire to reach his raven lore
was stronger.

Fingers swollen with bruises grasped at
the horn that had been embedded in his throat. Blood made the ivory
slippery. Gobs of flesh came away as he pulled on the twine and
closed his fist around the lore.

Ash
. He felt her presence
immediately, like a warm breeze or a sliver of sunlight shining upon
his back. She was close and unharmed.

Close and unharmed.

Those words made the next beating
bearable.

They came for him at some unknowable
point in the night, or perhaps it was the next night and he had slept
or been unconscious through a full day. This time they brought a hood
for his head. He wanted to tell them not to bother, as he could not
open his eyes, but instinctively he knew that any words spoken would
condemn him to torture of a worse kind. They beat him in silence,
always silence, grunting softly when striking a blow, breathing hard
when tired by their exertions. Someone brought a knife and slit open
skin on his thighs and buttocks. Someone else urinated on the wounds.

Days passed. For hours at a time he was
strung up on dog hooks hammered into the cell wall. His arms were
dead. The hood over his face made every breath taste of his own
trapped sweat. He was not fed, and what water he drank came from the
cell floor. Sometimes the river rose then fell, washing his own filth
away.

Close and unharmed.

Whenever he woke, he spoke those words
to himself. Time came when he no longer knew their meaning, yet even
then they calmed him, like a prayer spoken in a foreign tongue.

Often he dreamed of Drey: Drey racing
through the long summer grass in the graze; Drey teaching him how to
tie and trim trout lures in the dead of winter when all the trout
lakes were frozen; Drey waiting for him on the camp boundary the day
they set Tern's corpse ablaze. The ambush on the Bluddroad always
played itself out one beat slower than real time. Time and time again
Raif saw the two hard points of his brother's eyes as he swung his
war-scratched hammer into the Bludds-woman's face.

No. Raif'sdream-self fought the memory.
That was not his brother

swinging the hammer that day on the
Bluddroad. That was not the Drey he knew.

Hunger gnawed at Raif's body, then his
mind, robbing flesh and sanity and the simple ability to rest in
peace. Waiting became worse than the beatings. Waiting, he was alone,
utterly alone. Thoughts and dreams tormented him. Inigar Stoop
pointed a finger, calling him
Watcher of the Dead
. Tern
walked from the badlands fire, his body alive with flames, his mouth
opening and closing as he spoke the names of the men who had killed
him. Raif strained and strained but could not hear them. Later Effie
was there in the cell with him, standing knee deep in water, calmly
reciting a list of the lives he had taken… and somehow Shor
Gormalin and Banron Lye were on the list, and he wanted to tell her
that she was wrong, that he had killed no Hailsmen, but she
disappeared before he could form the words. Later still Mace
Blackhail was there, beneath the water, his wolf teeth flashing
yellow as he laughed and said, I
knew you'd push me too far
,

Sevrance.

Pain was something Raif passed out from
and woke to every day. Bruises blackened his body, yet he could not
see them. Split skin knitted and festered, healed and reopened,
raising scars and welts that only his fingers knew. Unseen Bluddsmen
choked and suffocated him into submission every night, his head held
underwater until his lungs burned like furnaces, the cord that held
his lore twisted until it robbed his breath. Soon the sickening
blackness of unconsciousness was all he knew of sleep.

Then one day the beatings stopped. The
high whine of the cell door woke him from unknowable hours of
senselessness. Through the fog of wakening senses, Raif waited for
the first blow to land. His body was stiff with pain, his stomach
sick with it. Above his head his arms ached with the strain of
bearing his weight. Every breath cost him. A muscle spasm in his knee
made his entire body jerk.
Close and unharmed
. Who? Effie?
Was she here? All thoughts left him as air switched against his
throat. He hated his body for flinching, hated the fear that came to
him as instantly as if he were a child listening for monsters in the
dark.

The expected blow did not come. Instead
hands worked on the rope that bound his wrists to the dog hook. The
sour taste of helplessness stung his mouth. The routine was to beat
him while he was strung, then later, when he was incapable of
taking action to protect himself from a fall, let him drop to the
stone bench or the floor. The change in tactics made him nervous.
When firm hands took him by the shoulders, he heard himself make an
animal sound, like a hiss.

Fingers grabbed the base of his hood,
snapping his head back. "Now is no time to fight, Hailsman."
The voice was rough, heavily accented. Its owner took Raif's weight
when the last of the ropes was cut and then laid him down upon the
bench.

Relief soaked through Raif like water
through a rag, leaving his body cold and limp. Another pair of hands
clutched his throat, but he hardly cared. At least he would be beaten
lying down.

A knife point pricked his jaw as the
rope that held the burlap hood in place was sawed. Blood rolled into
the crease between Raif's lips. The Bluddsman working the knife
smelled of the last meal he had eaten. The stench of scorched animal
fat and roasted leeks drove Raif to open his mouth and make a
bloodmeal of the fluids accumulated there. When the rope was severed,
the Bluddsman's fingers hooked the hem of the hood and pulled it
free.

Raif squeezed his eyes more tightly
closed. It had been days since he had last seen the faces of those
who beat him, and he had no wish to see them now. Fresh air buffeted
his face—also unwelcome. Suddenly he wished very much the
beating would begin.

Water sloshed as the man who had
handled him left the cell. Raif heard the door close, yet he did not
trust his senses and kept himself still. They had never left him
awake before. Minutes passed. The Wolf River rolled like liquid
thunder against the tower's exterior wall. Somewhere high above him,
water dripped in perfect time like a pulse. Nothing moved in the
cell. Raif concentrated on breathing… that, at least, was
something he could do.

"Open your eyes and look at me."

The voice came from close to the door.
It was not the same man who had spoken earlier, though both shared
the Bluddsman's accent. This voice was harder, older, wearier.

Water lashed against the cell's walls.
"I said LOOK AT ME!"

Raif obeyed. Skin on his eyelids tore
and bled as he forced the gummed tissue apart. Through a film of
blood he saw a man of medium height, heavily built and turning to
stoutness, with hair of such brilliant grayness that the braids that
hung down his back seemed like something woven from silver, not human
hair.