A Cavern of Black Ice (85 page)

More water and a fresh bowl of sotted
oats lay at his feet. Their presence reassured him: The world he had
come to know remained unchanged. He drank the water—all of it
this time—but had no stomach for the oats. Pain shot up his arm
as he pushed the bowl away, and memories of the night before came
with it. Creatures feeding on his flesh. Fangs as cold as ice. Raif
shook his head, drove the images back.

He relieved himself in the corner of
the cell and then let sleep take him once more.

He did not dream, or if he did, it was
of simple things that had no meaning. He slept well and long, and
when he next opened his eyes it was dawn.

His body moved more easily from the
bench this time. His head pounded less. When he reached for the
freshwater bladder, he tensed, but the pain when it came was less
than expected. Having drunk his fill, he probed the cuts, bruises,
and sore points on his body. A rib broken during the first of many
beatings had already begun to mend. It hurt when he touched it, but
the join seemed surprisingly smooth. A bruise the size and shape of a
ewe's heart colored the skin above his left kidney. The organ beneath
was tender, and he winced as his fingers examined it. The split
stitchwork on his chest was hard with scabbed flesh, and his arms and
legs were striped with cuts at various stages of healing. All of his
muscles ached. When he probed the glands that lay beneath his
jawline, his fingers brushed against the cord that held his lore.

Ash. Close and unharmed. He didn't even
need to touch the lore itself to know it.

After that he stopped tending his
wounds and lay down on the bench to rest and think of Ash. The
knowledge she was safe soothed him, and he soon fell asleep.

He awoke to the awareness that he was
not alone in the cell. Without opening his eyes or changing his
breathing pattern, he tested the light levels through his eyelids and
drew air across his tongue. It was full dark. It could have been
anytime in the long winter's night, but the darkness had a weight and
complexity to it that came only with many hours of nightfall. The air
tasted of dogskins and rendered dog fat, and Raif knew he was in the
presence of the Dog Lord. He opened his eyes.

Moonlight silvered the cell, glinting
upon the water and turning stone walls to blocks of ice. The Dog Lord
was looking straight at him, his face half-hidden by shadow, his eyes
the color of ink. Taking a breath, he filled his chest with air that
stank of death. "They told me the fever would not take you."

Raif acknowledged the words with a
small movement of his jaw. The movement annoyed the Dog Lord, and he
kicked the water at his feet, sending it spraying into Raif's face.
"Why is it that you live so easily when those who cross you die
more quickly than newborns in a wolfs jaw?"

Shaking drops of river water from his
face, Raif rose to sit upright on the bench. He made no reply. The
only sound was the water sloshing against the walls of the cell.

The Dog Lord ran a large red hand over
his face and his braids. For a moment he looked very old. When he
spoke his voice trembled. "Tell me, what evil lies at the heart
of your clan, that men such as you and the Hail Wolf are born?"

The Hail Wolf. So that's what they were
calling Mace Blackhail these days. Raif said, "Do not link my
name with his."

"Why? You slew in his name on the
Bluddroad, then again in the snow outside Duff's."

Raif's face burned. There was nothing
to say.

"Answer me!"

He flinched but did not speak. To
answer would be a betrayal of his clan… of Drey. The truth had
died that day on the Bluddroad. He would not be the one to resurrect
it.

The Dog Lord came for him, lunging
through the river water to take Raif's throat in his hands. Pressing
his thumbs into Raif's windpipe, he cried, "You slew my babies.
Out there, in the cold and the snow. Children, they were, just
children. Scared, shivering, clutching at their mothers' skirts."
His voice was terrible to hear, rough with grief so powerful that
each word shook him like a fever. The image he created was so close
to the truth that Raif could not meet his eyes. "And they called
for their granda to help them. And their granda did not hear."

Abruptly the Dog Lord released his hold
and turned away. Muscles to either side of his neck jerked
powerfully, yet within a second he had stilled them.

Raif spat blood. His throat was on
fire, but he made his voice hard as he said, "You slew our chief
in the badlands, him and a dozen more. You started this dance of
swords. You struck the first blow."

The Dog Lord lashed at air with his
hand, pushing Raif's words from him. "Clan Bludd made no raid on
Blackhail. It may have suited the Hail Wolf to claim it, but Dagro
Blackhail did not die by my hand."

Raif stood. He knew he should be
surprised at what the Dog Lord said, but he wasn't. A cold anger grew
within him, and he felt his face tighten as he stared at the Dog
Lord's turned back. "Why didn't you
deny
it?"

"Who would? When half of the
clanholds is praising your jaw for carrying off such a raid, and the
other half are so scared that it might happen to them that the piss
freezes to their thighs at the sound of your name, who's going to
stand up and forswear it?" The Dog Lord shook his head. "Not
me."

"Who, then? Who did it?"

Something in Raif's voice made the Dog
Lord turn to face him. His eyes were hard as sapphires, yet Raif met
them with a hardness of his own. This man standing before him
possessed knowledge that could have stopped a war.

The Dog Lord's braids rose and fell
against his chest as he gathered breath to speak. His voice, when it
came, was unrepentant. "You'll hear no answers about the
badlands raid from me. I wasn't the one who rode home from a killing
field and named myself a chief."

Raif felt a portion of his anger leave
him. The Dog Lord had spoken his own thoughts right back to him.
Struggling to find sense, Raif said, "What of the wounds? Bron
Hawk was there the night you made raid on the Dhoonehouse. He said
your swords entered flesh but drew no blood. I saw the same thing at
the badlands camp. My father's rib cage was smashed to pieces, yet
there was barely enough blood to dye his shirt."

The Dog Lord swore. Placing a hand upon
the cell wall, he let the ancient stone of the Ganmiddich Tower bear
a portion of his weight. "I should have known," he
murmured. "The devil is playing both sides."

Hairs on Raif's arms prickled, and in
the space of one second he remembered all that Death had said.
Kill
an army for me, Raif Sevrance
. Raif shivered. He heard his voice
say, "What do you mean?"

The Dog Lord turned on him. "What
do I mean? What do I mean? You dare ask
me
what I mean? You,
who have slain children in cold blood and butchered three of my
warriors so badly that I could not let the widows tend their
corpses." Spittle flew from his lips as he spoke, and his braids
cracked against his shoulders like whips. "I will answer no
questions from Watcher of the Dead. Cluff Drybannock was right. You
must be finished, and quickly. Would that he and his men had cut you
down where they found you, and not thought to save you for me.

Would that the deed had been done, and
my hands need not be stained with your blood."

Raif stood tall and silent in the face
of the Dog Lord's fury. He wondered how much of it had to do with
him. The Bludd chief had not known about the wounds at the badlands
camp. Yet he knew now, and that knowledge had shaken him.

The Dog Lord took the three steps
necessary to bring himself opposite Raif. Reaching out, he closed his
hands around Raif's lore. "They said your guide had named you a
raven." With one quick movement he snapped the twine. "If
it wasn't for an oath spoken to the Surlord's daughter, you would be
dead this night, Raif Sevrance. Know that. Think on that. And then
spend the next night praying to the Stone Gods for mercy, for when
the time comes you shall get none from me."

With that he turned and walked toward
the door. Before he reached inside the lock hole to open it, he
dropped the raven lore into the dark, greasy water at his feet.

Raif swayed, forced himself to stay
upright until the Dog Lord had gone.

In the Crab Chiefs
Chamber

Noticing that the smoke from the
fish-oil lanterns irritated Sarga Veys' eyes, Vaylo Bludd ordered
another two to be lit. He couldn't stand the stench of them
himself—he'd been in this blasted tall roundhouse for six days
now, and his clothes and braids reeked of river trout—but he'd
be damned if he'd make this meeting any easier for the Halfman. They
could call him the Fish Lord first!

Neither Marafice Eye nor the Halfman
looked at ease. The Knife had already staked out a corner of the
chief's chamber and made it his own. He walked it now, his massive
body straining against his urine-softened leathers as he moved. Every
now and then he would look around, his gaze alighting on blunt
objects, metal pokers, and ceremonial weaponry like a prisoner
contemplating escape. The Dog Lord detected a limp, carefully
concealed. As for the Halfman, well, he looked no different from when
Vaylo had seen him last. Despite the long ride from Ille Glaive, his
white robe and kidskin boots were barely soiled, and he must have
shaved on the hoof for his jaw was smoother than a purse made of
silk.

They had arrived at noon. Ten men in
all: the Knife, the Halfman, a sworn brother with only three fingers
on his right hand, and a full Rive Watch sept. The sept's appearance
upon the bluff south of the roundhouse had caused a stir among the
clan. The Rive Watch, with their bloodred blades, their black leather
cloaks, and the Killhound embroidered at their breasts, represented
the might of Spire Vanis to the clansmen. They wore iron bird helms,
which none removed until they were challenged by a dozen spearmen a
hundred paces from the roundhouse door. It was an act of arrogance
and hostility that Vaylo had made them pay for.

After four hours' forced wait in the
ewe pen, the sept's manners seemed little improved.

It was dark now, early evening. A high
wind rattled the shutters and breathed down the chimney, causing the
flames in the hearth to leap into the room. The sept and the man with
eight fingers had been led to the Ganmiddich kitchen, where Molo Bean
had them well in hand. Vaylo almost pitied them, for Molo was an
excellent hammerman and a fine cook, yet he hated city men with a
vengeance. Eighteen summers ago a troop of white helms from Morning
Star had killed his brother in a dawn raid upon his father's
homestead in Clan Otler. The white helms had taken offense at a damn
built by Shaunie Bean to direct water from the Wolf River northward
to wet his fields.

Vaylo sucked on his aching teeth. The
city of Morning Star was no friend to Clan Bludd. He would have to
remember to send an osprey to his first son, Quarro, tell him to set
more watches on the Bluddhold's southern borders. The Lord Rising and
his white-helmed cockerels would get no land from Vaylo Bludd.

Troubled, the Dog Lord turned his
attention to Marafice Eye and Sarga Veys. He had left them to stew
for an extra hour in the chief's chamber while he fed and kenneled
his dogs. It had seemed a fair idea at the time, yet now he wished he
hadn't bothered. This matter was better over and done.

"Has she been given supper yet?"
Sarga Veys said, his voice as high and grating as the sound of a
sackpipe leaking air.

"I am not her nursemaid."
Vaylo sat at the head of the chief's table, a block of green
riverstone pitted with ancient fish fossils and petrified shells. A
dozen horseshoe crabs, perfectly preserved, formed a circle below the
Dog Lord's hand. "How would I know if she's been fed or not?
What does it matter to you?" The anger was quick to come. His
two remaining grandchildren were on their way home to Dhoone,
escorted by Drybone and his crew. Nan had returned with them. By
Vaylo's reckoning they would have reached the halfway point by now.
Stone Gods protect them.

"It matters," said Sarga Veys
with a sharp little jab of his chin, "because I need to drug
her."

Vaylo didn't like the sound of that.
"What with?"

"Nothing. A little posy to make
her sleep."

"I said,
what with
?"

Marafice Eye stopped pacing and dropped
his hand to his weapon's belt. It was empty, of course—the
first Bluddsmen to meet the sept and its leader had ransomed their
weapons until such time as they departed—yet the Knife had a
way of making the gesture look threatening even when his scabbard lay
slack against his thigh. He was a dangerous man, Vaylo reckoned, yet
he still feared the Halfman more.

Sarga Veys sent the Knife a superior
glance, one that assumed command of him by warning, Easy
with
your hostilities
. Not surprisingly the Knife ignored it. No love
lost between those two there.

"Very well," Sarga Veys said.
"If you must know, I intend to give Asarhia blood of the poppy
and the pulverized seeds of henbane."

So he meant to carry her away from the
roundhouse without her knowledge or consent. By the time those two
mind-deadening drugs wore off, the Knife and the Halfman would be
well away from Ganmiddich, on the far side of the Bitter Hills. And
the girl herself would be left so weak, she'd be lucky if she could
swallow water and sit a horse.

Vaylo took a wad of black curd from his
pouch and chewed on it. He had seen for himself what the Surlord's
daughter could do when she was cornered, so he understood the need
for caution. Yet henbane could be poisonous in heavy doses. And that
he would not have. "You will not give the girl henbane under my
roof."