A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) (12 page)

The men seemed to come from nowhere. A harsh cry raised Effie’s head, a lead door was sent cracking against a wall, and then clansmen burst into the forge. Breathing hard, glittering with drawn steel, they moved to circle the room. Effie had once witnessed a group of hunters surrounding a wounded boar before a kill, and she recognized the same nervous excitement; the sucked-in cheeks and wet lips. The fear of drawing too close to their prey.

“Stay your ground, witch.”

Effie recognized the speaker as Stanner Hawk, brother to Will and uncle to Bron who had both been slain in the snow outside of Duffs. Tall and pale like his brother, Stanner bore no love for anyone bearing the Sevrance name. Something hardened within Effie as he looked upon her. Raif had fought to save the lives of Will and Bron, yet that one fact had been twisted and ground down, and now all that could be remembered about the night outside of Duffs was that Raif Sevrance had spoken out against his clan.

Effie raised her chin. This was a coward before her. They all were. Two dozen men to capture an unblooded girl. They didn’t even have the jaw to do it in full daylight on open ground; instead they had watched and sneaked and waited. Like weasels after eggs.

There was not a hammerman amongst them. No man who bore a hammer would raise a hand to harm his own. Instead there were Mace Blackhail’s cronies; old and hard Turby Flapp bearing a sword so badly weighted he couldn’t keep the point off the floor, lean and dark Craw Bannering clad in the cured hides and swan feathers of Clan Harkness, known as the Half Clan, his long tattooed fingers resting easily on a blade. The longswordsmen Arlan Perch and Ichor Roe moved with practiced stealth to take positions behind Effie’s back. Many of the men were older Hailsmen, too long cooped up in a roundhouse at war and eager for any kind of blood.

And then there were the Scarpemen. Uriah Scarpe and Wracker Fox and others she did not know. Lean men, dressed in the black leatherwork and weasel pelts of Scarpe, watching her as if they had something to fear.
They really believe I’m a witch.
The thought came quickly and with it another:
This trap was carefully set
. No Shanks or hammermen had been told, no one who was friend to Drey.

“Stand up, witch.” Stanner Hawk’s voice was cold, and for the first time Effie wondered if he had something more than capture on his mind. With his sword fist he made a gesture to Craw Bannering. The dark bowman moved toward the woodstack and selected a cord of wood.

“I
said
stand up, witch.” Stanner Hawk lashed out with his foot, sending a tub of brine crashing to the floor. Salt water splashed Effie’s face.

Effie felt the calm leaving her. Her lore began to twitch against her skin, and she noticed sharp-eyed Uriah Scarpe glancing at the wool around her throat. Looking away, her gaze came to rest on her flint knife, there on the stone floor beside the pallet, only three paces from her foot. Uriah Scarpe was still watching her so she quickly turned her gaze. Slowly she began to rise, setting the bowl of iron juice on the floor.

Craw Bannering had drawn on the thick cowhide gloves of a hot-metal worker. The cord of wood now lay unbound beside the furnace, and the yearman was using both hands to pull back the cast-iron door that guarded the charging hole. Heat from the furnace leapt into the room as air was sucked into the hole. Craw fed the fire below it, choosing only the driest, densest wood.

Old men shifted their weights, whether with unease or excitement Effie didn’t know. One of the Scarpemen said, “Pump the bellows, Crawman.”

Stanner Hawk’s eyes glinted orange in the growing blaze. “You are charged with being a witch, Effie Sevrance. Confess now and receive the swift judgment of my blade.”

Someone at her back whispered, “It’ll be a mercy for you, lass, in the end.”

Twenty-four pairs of eyes watched her. Turby Flapp took a hand from his poorly made sword to wipe the saliva off his lips. Effie looked at every one of them; Hailsmen and Scarpemen and strangers alike. She was shaking, and she couldn’t seem to speak, so all she could do to show her innocence was look them in their faces and meet their stares. One or two had the decency to look away. Arlan Perch found something to study on the knuckleguard of his sword.

“Speak, witch.” Stanner Hawk was playing to the room now, his back turned toward her as he walked the circle of anvils. “I’ll hear something from you before I put your feet to the fire.”

Effie heard the belch of popping mud-bubbles as the mud trough surrounding the furnace began to boil. Ridiculously, she thought of the shankshounds. They made sounds like that whenever they were given greens instead of meat. Thoughts of shankshounds helped, and she suddenly found her voice. “Stanner Hawk, my Da said you once cheated him out of a kill, swapping his spear for yours so you could claim the she-bear as your own. My Da never lied, and nor will I. I am not a witch. The shankshounds saved me out of love and loyalty, not sorcery. They’d do the same for their master Orwin Shank, just as Mace Blackhail’s hellhounds would save him.”

Several grunts of agreement echoed around the forge. Many men here kept hounds, and all took pride in their dogs’ fierceness and loyalty.

Stanner Hawk’s face had lost what little color it had been blessed with. Two points of anger burned in his eyes, and Effie knew she had made a mistake attacking his honor. He would see her burned for it.

In three quick strides he was in front of her, the point of his sword pressing against the plump flesh of her lower lip. “Open your mouth, witch. Let me see the tongue that lies so easily. I’d heard witches could charm the sword from a man’s hand, but I never thought to see such a thing myself.” His last words were directed at the gathered clansmen, and to a man they straightened and raised their swords. No clever-speaking witch was going to fool
them
.

“Your father was a good man, Effie Sevrance,” cried hard-eyed Turby Flapp. “You do him a disservice by defending yourself at his expense. What man here hasn’t clashed with another over kills? It’s not something you bring home to the women. Let them tend to their traps, not the hunt.”

Cries of
“Aye!”
circled the room. Turby Flapp was old and shaking, yet Effie could still see the triumph in his eyes. He’d insulted her and her father, and fired the men with righteous rage.

Mace Blackhail had chosen well.

Oh, she knew why he wasn’t here, in this room. His hands must be seen to be clean. When Drey came to him, as Drey certainly would, Mace could say,
Drey, if I’d been there I would have stopped it. I was holding vigil around the Great Hearth. I had no idea what these men would do.

Effie felt the bite of Stanner’s sword as it split her lip, sending a line of blood trickling down her chin. Immediately a shift took place in the room. Breaths came hard and fast as sweating palms made it necessary to alter grips. Blood had been spilled. All hope of mercy was lost.

Stanner Hawk’s mouth tightened in satisfaction, and with a kingly gesture he withdrew his sword. “Wracker,” he said to one of the Scarpe swordsmen. “Feed the hound through the hole.”

Wracker Fox was powerful in the way Shor Gormalin had been powerful: small and lean and so swift to movement that it was like watching a hare bolt from a set. In an instant he was gone from the forge. What seemed like seconds later he was back, something wrapped in a blanket held fast against his chest.

Effie thought her heart would stop when she heard the first frightened whimper. They had caught and bound one of the shankshounds.

Wracker Fox dropped the dog onto the floor to free it from the blanket. The dog’s legs had been hobbled and its snout tightly muzzled with tarred rope, and the creature landed badly on its side. Effie flinched. It was Old Scratch, the gentle, dignified elder of the pack. Wounds around his eyes and jaw told he hadn’t been taken without a fight.

Stanner Hawk said, “Put him in feet first, like we will the girl.”

A sound left Effie’s throat, a sound so soft and powerless that no man in the room paid it heed . . . but it was enough for Old Scratch to hear her and know that she was there. Slowly and at great cost, he turned his large amber gaze upon her.

Never, ever, not even if she lived for a thousand years would Effie Sevrance forget that look. Terror, faith and love touched her with such force it was as if she were inside the dog’s head. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. The shankshounds had saved her life.

“Stop,” she murmured to Stanner Hawk. “Set the dog free and I’ll give you what you want.”

Stanner ran a pale hand over his dark beard, and then exchanged a brief satisfied glance with Turby Flapp. Turning his back on her once more he said, “So you admit you are a witch as charged. And that you aided Clan Bludd in the attack upon Dagro Blackhail in the badlands, and the assassination of Shor Gormalin in the Wedge. You admit also that you helped your brother Raif Sevrance desert this clan, and heard him confess that cowardice drove him from the ambush on the Bluddroad. Lastly you confess that you bewitched Orwin Shanks’s hounds and forced them to attack an innocent man and woman for no other reason than you feared they knew you for a witch.” Stanner Hawk was suddenly there, back in front of her face, his smile so cold it chilled her. “Do you admit these sins, Effie Sevrance, before the faces of nine gods?”

Da, I didn’t do them.
Effie looked at Old Scratch, then quickly looked away. She found she couldn’t face the dog and lie. Stanner Hawk was something different. She tilted her chin, raised her gaze and looked him full in the eye. “I admit I am a witch before the faces of nine gods.”

Breath was sucked in around the room. Some of the older clansmen touched their tines. One man, ancient and stoop-backed Ezander Straw, began to name the nine gods:
Ganolith, Hammada, Ione, Loss, Uthred, Oban, Larannyde, Malweg, Behathmus.

Flames from the furnace leapt high, sending waves of heat switching wildly around the room. The mud in the trough boiled madly, slapping and sucking as the water within it turned to steam. Stanner Hawk’s pale lips twitched. His knuckles were white where they curled around his sword. Still holding Effie’s gaze he said, “Craw, send the dog to the fire.”

“No,” she breathed. Then, louder,
“NO
!”

“Yes,” he hissed. “I make no covenants with a witch.”

“But . . . you said . . . The dog—”

Turby Flapp stepped forward and slapped her face. “Hush, girl. ’Chant us no more with your lies.”

Frantic with terror and helplessness, Effie didn’t feel the pain of the blow. She couldn’t find the words to save Old Scratch.
They said . . . they said . . . Old Scratch isn’t used to the heat. He’s afraid of lit candles . . . I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Da. Didn’t have the words.

Craw Bannering hefted the dog against his chest. Air venting from the charging hole shimmered with heat. The fire crackled and roared, releasing showers of white-hot sparks. Twenty-four men fell silent. No one except the bowman moved. The smith’s gloves reached as high as Craw’s upper arms, protecting him from the flames as he fed the dog to the furnace.

The heat was so great in the smelting chamber that fire ignited from dry air. Old Scratch screamed, thrashing and jerking, his eyes wide with terror as he fought to buck himself free. When the first flames found his flesh he let out a terrible moan. Effie watched, waited, knowing the dog’s gaze would come to her, determined in every part of her that she would not look away.

Old Scratch’s eyes were dimming when he found her, yet the same thing she had seen in them before was there. Faith. He thought she could save him. Even now.

Effie felt tears run down her face as the last of the dog went to the fire. Something hard and terrible was growing within her, and she felt the first stirrings of rage. Eyes darting, she studied the men who formed a circle around her. Their attention was given fully to the thrashing thing alive with flames. Slowly, slowly, she moved two paces to the side, put her foot on Bitty’s flint knife, and sent a hand down her leg to scratch her knee. In an instant the knife was hers. Straightening, she checked the two Hailsmen behind her; their gazes hadn’t shifted from the smelting chamber.

As the smell of singed fur and roasting meat filled the room, Effie found her grip on the blade. Men were shifting now, rubbing their eyes as if they had woken from a dream. When Stanner Hawk turned to face her she was ready.

“Witch. May the fire go no gentler on you.” He motioned to the two Scarpemen, Uriah Scarpe and Wracker Fox. “Seize and bind her. Let her go awake and repentant to the flames.”

As the two Scarpemen moved to flank her, Effie showed her knife. Sweeping the blade in a circle in front of her, she spoke in a shaky voice. “Stay back. You’ll not find me as defenseless as a dog.”

Someone close to the door snorted. Uriah Scarpe stretched thin weasel lips to a smirk. Wracker Fox danced back in mock fright. “Well, well, my little Blackhail hellcat. I see you’ve a fancy for a fight.”

Stanner Hawk wasn’t amused. “Burn her and be done.”

“Aye,” added Turby Flapp. “Allow her no chance to do more witchery this night.”

Effie felt her face burn.
Stupid, stupid.
How could she have thought they’d be afraid of a girl with a stone knife? That was when she saw Uriah Scarpe’s gaze return to her lore. The granite stone was twitching with force, moving the wool fabric of her dress. She watched fear enlarge the Scarpeman’s pupils . . . and then she knew what she must do.

Remember, they think I’m a witch.

Still holding the knife firm, she swept down and grabbed the bowl of iron juice from the floor. Before any clansman had a chance to react she dipped the blade of her knife into the swirling fluid. A thousand pores in the flint soaked up the black. The blade emerged glistening and smoking, like a piece of frozen night. Almost when she saw it she felt afraid herself, for the look of it stirred memories within her that she did not know she had. But then Da’s smell was upon it; the smell of barley too old and honey nearly off and peat that had been burned, not smoked. It gave her strength and heart, and when she spoke all fear was gone.