A Cavern of Black Ice (81 page)

The Dog Lord.

Raif knew it instantly. The man's
presence filled the cell like a guidestone. It was impossible not to
look at his deep blue eyes, impossible not to edge back in his
presence. How had he stood there for so long, watching in utter
silence, without making himself known?

The Dog Lord said nothing. He looked
at
Raif and
through
him, his eyes pulling answers, his entire
being pressing against Raif with a force so great it made breathing
impossible.

Raif held his gaze steady. He thought
of the four Bluddsmen at Duff's Stovehouse, the Bludd women and
children running through the snow the day of the ambush. Shame burned
him.

The Dog Lord continued looking, seeing,
knowing
. His heavy breaths made the shin-deep water ripple
as if with dropped stones. Suddenly he moved. Raif braced himself for
a blow, but instead the Dog Lord turned his back.

A cold dagger entered Raif's heart. The
contempt of the gesture cut him to the core. You
are not worthy
of my fist
, it said. You
are not worthy of my breath.

As the Dog Lord opened the cell door
and entered the world waiting on the other side, Raif felt himself
shrink and wither like a dead leaf cast from a tree. He was nothing.
The Bludd chief's scorn had stripped away what the beatings could
not. He was an oath breaker, an outcast, a killer of men. As Angus
had promised, the story of the killings at Duff's Stovehouse had
spread. Raif Sevrance's name and his deeds were known to all. His
presence at the Bluddroad ambush was known, and the betrayal of his
clan.

Raif brought his knees to his chest and
prayed for the senselessness of sleep. He did not want to feel or
think. The pain was not enough, though. The leaking eye, the cracked
ribs, the slit ear and lip, and the torn muscles in his arms and
thighs were suddenly hurts that could be borne. He lay there in the
quarter light and suffered the voices from his past.

You
are no good for this clan, Raif
Sevrance
, murmured Inigar Stoop. You
are chosen to watch the
dead
.

You
knew I would leave
! Raif
fired back at him. So
why did you not stop me from taking First
Oath?

Inigar Stoop shook his head from his
place behind the shadows, the silver medallions sewn to his pig coat
making a sound like breaking glass.
Ask that of the Stone Gods,
Raif Sevrance. It is they who form your fate, not I
.

Raif turned away, shifting limbs that
felt hot to the touch. Still the voices hounded him. Raina warned him
about Effie:
Just you be careful with her, Raif Sevrance
.
You
and Drey are all she has
.

And Drey spoke up for him that day on
the court:
I will stand second to his oath
.

Raif howled into the darkness.

Hours later, fever finally took him to
sleep.

When next he woke the world was soft
around the edges. Someone, a Bluddsman, placed a bowl containing
thick gray liquid beside him on the bench. Raif watched the bowl
intently. He did not move. Fever lines spreading along in his chest
made his body tremble. Thirst tore at his throat, yet he could take
no action to relieve it. Watching the bowl was all he could manage,
and he did it diligently until he knew no more.

Lords and Maidens

Vaylo Bludd slipped a square of black
curd into his mouth and chewed on it. The wolf dog and the other dogs
sat in a circle around their master, their great jaws firmly closed,
their ears pinned close to their heads in sign of submission.
Occasionally one would moan softly, making a sound as if in physical
pain.

Vaylo sat in silence, chewing. Ahead in
the distance lay the shimmering black line of the Wolf River and the
dark hump in its center that formed the Ganmiddich Inch. It was
bitterly cold, yet the Dog Lord felt little of it. The night air was
still, and the sky above the clan-hold was cloudless, revealing a
clawed moon and a thousand ice blue stars. Sitting where he was, on a
block of trap rock used for blunting hammer edges and filleting trout
pulled from the river, Vaylo could see both the Ganmiddich Tower and
the roundhouse. All his now. All the land south to the Bitter Hills
was his.

Footsteps crunched in the snow behind
his back. The Dog Lord did not need to look around to know the
identity of the one who approached. The reaction of his dogs told him
all he needed to know. "Does he still live?"

Cluff Drybannock made no answer, yet
Vaylo knew well enough the question had been heard and understood.
Coming to crouch by the dogs, Drybone gazed out across the river as
he warmed his hands against the wolf dog's throat. After a while he
said, "He's still fevered. Cawdo doesn't know how he's made it
through the past five days. Says any other Hailsman would be dead by
now."

Vaylo spat the curd into his glove.
Suddenly he didn't want to be out in the cold any longer. He wanted
to be close to the hearth, his arms full of the two grandchildren he
had left. Without a word, he stood.

The dogs were as much a part of him as
the gray braids that fell down his back, and they rose as a single
body the moment they heard their master's boot leather creak. Drybone
also rose. He need not have done—Cluff Drybannock had led the
raiding party that took the Ganmiddich clanhold, and his due respect
was now great enough that he need stand for no man, even his
chief—yet he did so as quickly as always. Others might have
dismissed the gesture as mere force of habit, but Vaylo knew better
than that. Cluff Drybannock stood because he was a bastard and that's
what bastards did.

Vaylo placed his hand on Drybone's
shoulder, and together man and chief took the short walk back to the
roundhouse.

The Ganmiddich roundhouse was small
compared with those of Dhoone and Bludd. Built of trap rock and green
riverstone, it commanded a high bank above the river and the forest
of oldgrowth oaks known as the Nest. The main structure rose a full
six stories above-ground, in fitting with the Ganmiddich boast:
Over
mountains and our enemies we tower alike
. Like most northern
clansmen, Vaylo felt nothing but distrust for a roundhouse that rose
to meet the clouds. A roundhouse's strength should come from the
earth and the Stone Gods that lived there. Yet many of the southern
clans built high roundhouses, betraying the influence of the Mountain
Cities and the god of sky, air, and nothingness that the city men
prayed to.

The Dog Lord shook his head as he and
Drybone entered the storm-smoothed edifice of the roundhouse's
southern wall. He found little joy in possession. Crab Ganmiddich,
the Ganmiddich chief, was a man who had come to power only five years
after he had. Crab swore like a trapper, would start a fight with any
man who looked at him the wrong way, and had fathered as many
bastards as most men had eaten meals, yet Vaylo had liked him well
enough. He never lied, never failed to acknowledge his bastards, and
once ten years ago when wet-pox killed off all of neighboring Clan
Withy's spring lambs, he had sent sixty head of blacknecks as a gift.

Vaylo sucked on his aching teeth. He
had no grievances with Crab Ganmiddich, none save the man's newly
struck friendship with the Hail Wolf. The attack on Bannen had made
the Crab chief nervous, and rather than rely solely upon Dhoone for
protection, he had been making overtures to Blackhail. Dhoone was
weak, broken, and dispossessed. Blackhail was strong and getting
stronger. Who could blame the Crab chief for dancing to two fiddles?
As for Mace Blackhail… well, he had fought beside Dhoonesmen
to save Bannen, and once the battle was done and he had returned home
to that dark stinking Hail-hold of his, he must have turned his gaze
south and asked himself, "What did I get for my trouble?"

The Dog Lord shook out his braids. Next
time Clan Blackhail came to the defense of a Dhoone-sworn clan, he
doubted very much that the Hail Wolf would return home empty-handed.
He had ambitions, that one. Vaylo recognized the taint.

"The Crab's fled east to Croser,"
Drybone said, as always his thoughts closely following his chiefs.
"He's gathered forty score men about him and taken possession of
the old fortalice."

Vaylo grunted. Slowly his enemies were
mounting on his borders. Dhoone was split among Gnash, Bannen, and
Castlemilk, and now Ganmiddich was housed at Croser. Any other time
these facts would have consumed him, yet here and now his mind would
not settle. The Hailsman was too close. Half the rooms in the
Ganmiddich roundhouse looked out upon the tower and the Inch. All
Vaylo had to do was raise his head and look.

He looked now, one last time before
Drybone drew the great clan door closed, shutting out the frost and
the night. Thirty stories of green granite rose above the river's
surface like a Stone God's finger pointing at the sky. Ganmiddich
Tower. Raif Sevrance was held there at water level. Watcher of the
Dead.

A shiver passed along the Dog Lord's
body, making his seventeen teeth rattle in their casings of bone.

"Nan. Bring the bairns to me. I'll
be in the chiefs chamber." He spoke to a middle-aged Bluddswoman
with braids the color and texture of sea rope, who approached with
beer and sotted oats as he and Drybone crossed the vaulted expanse of
the great hall. The woman met eyes with Vaylo for half an instant,
nodded, then withdrew.

Nan Culldayis had traveled down from
Dhoone with him. She looked after his grandchildren now their mother
and elder sister were gone. Vaylo trusted Nan with his life. She had
nursed his wife through the last year of her illness and cared for
his grandchildren and sons' wives since. For many years now she had
provided him with what private comforts he needed. She was of an age
where conception and childbirth were well behind her, and that suited
Vaylo well enough. Thirty-five years ago on his wedding day he had
sworn to himself he would father no bastards.

Vaylo's thoughts were broken by the
soft burr of Cluff Dryban-nock's voice. "Say the word and I will
assemble a troop of hammermen and escort the bairns back to Dhoone."

Halting by the chief's door, the Dog
Lord turned and looked into the man's Sull-blue eyes. "You don't
think I should have brought them here."

It was not a question, yet Drybone
answered it anyway. "No. This roundhouse is no place for them.
It's only a matter of time before the Crab tries to reclaim it."

"And what if I had left them at
Dhoone, with their father? How safe would they be there?"

"Safer than here, on the cityhold
border, in a roundhouse only a day's ride from Bannen and Croser, and
not much farther from Gnash."

Vaylo slammed a fist against the door.
The dogs at his heels skittered and shrank to their haunches. "Don't
you think I know the dangers? Don't you think I lie awake each night,
thinking and rethinking them?"

Drybone did not respond in any way to
his chief's anger. Instead he held his fine head level and spoke in a
quiet voice. "Every journey you take them on is a danger. They
are best kept at the Heart of Clan, at Dhoone."

He was right, and Vaylo knew it.
Entering the green-walled interior of the chiefs chamber, he turned
to Drybone and said, "I fear to let them out of my sight, Dry.
Two now, only two."

Cluff Drybannock nodded, once. He
offered no comfort, made no attempt to remind him that his sons were
still young and would father dozens more, and Vaylo was grateful for
that. For the second time that night he touched Drybone on the
shoulder. "I'll let you take them in a few days."

As Drybone assented with the briefest
of his always brief smiles, the two children in question came
bounding through the door. Ignoring their grandfather completely,
they made straight for the dogs.

After watching them wrestle, tumble,
and shriek in delight at the black-and-orange beasts known throughout
the North as the Dog Lord's knuckles, Vaylo turned to Drybone and
grinned. "I can't say they'll miss me much."

Cluff Drybannock turned to go.

Halting him with a small turn of the
wrist, Vaylo said, "How is the girl?"

"Well. Nan visited her room today.
Says she's not the sort to starve herself or throw tantrums. I think
she's quite taken with her myself."

Vaylo rubbed his jaw, soothing his
aching teeth as he thought.

"How old is she?"

Drybone shrugged. "Just a girl.
Tall, thin."

"Have her brought to me, Dry. I
would look upon the Surlord's daughter myself."

"Here?" Drybone's gaze
flicked to the children, who were giggling wildly as they groomed the
wolf dog's belly with their feet.

"Aye. If Nan thinks well enough of
her, then I'll trust her at my hearth."

Drybone left, closing the door behind
him as quietly as if he were a servant, not the man who only seven
days ago had claimed Ganmiddich for Bludd.
Give me two hundred
swordsmen
, Dry had said the day before he'd left,
and your
silence until the deed is done
. Even now Vaylo did not know how
he'd managed it. Two hundred men to take a roundhouse the size of
Ganmiddich? And it hadn't been
a
bloodbath, either…
not like Withy.

Easing himself onto the maid's stool
close to the fire, Vaylo slapped his thighs for dogs and children
alike. Many feet, both hairy and hairless, scampered over the stone
to reach him by the shortest, quickest route. The two children came
and sat at his feet while he unhooked the leather cinches from his
belt and began lashing the dogs into a team. The dogs hated being
bound, but the children's presence tempered their normal reaction,
and Vaylo managed to collar them with only a minor loss of skin and
blood. When he was done, he looped the main lead over a spit hook in
the hearthwall.