A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) (29 page)

“So, Father. What’s it to be? Do you send a wifeless bastard from the roundhouse, or me?”

Vaylo looked to Cluff Drybannock. Since he’d taken his final oath six years back Dry had gathered a troop of loyal swordsmen about him. His skill with the longsword was unmatched in the clanholds, and no swordsman could watch him in battle and remain unmoved. He was Vaylo’s right hand, silent and uncomplaining, and he would fight to the death to protect his chief.
Yet I have given him so little; a sword, a bed, brotherhood in a hostile clan. I should have taken him as my son formally, spilt my blood over his. Yet he never asked for it, and I always thought there’d be time enough for such sentimental fussing when all wars and conflicts were done.

The Dog Lord’s hand closed around his measure of guidestone, weighing the gray powder in his fist. He wanted Dry here, with him. When an attack came, and he knew one would, he would fight easier knowing Dry was at his back. Pengo was a fierce warrior and he rode with a fierce crew, but he lacked loyalty and obedience . . . and something else that Vaylo couldn’t name. Perhaps the cold and deadly grace of the Sull.

Drybone’s gaze rose to meet his chief’s. Moonlight sheened his hair and ran along the sharply defined bones of his face. He was wearing a cloak of auburn wool, its hem weighted with bronze chains so it would not move with the wind; a gift from Ockish Bull upon his deathbed.

Dry, I love you like a son.

But I love my grandchildren more.

The Dog Lord turned to his son. “You will stay here at the roundhouse with your crew. You’ll take charge of securing the perimeter. I want a station on the Flow to the south, and one on Lost Clan Field to the east. Plan for ranging parties to ride as far west as the Muzzle, and make sure every scout’s equipped with fire arrows and horns.”

Pengo stood straighter. “Aye.”

Vaylo was glad he said no more. Glad that his second son chose not to gloat, for he didn’t think he could have borne it. Weariness stole over him, and suddenly he wanted very much to be with Nan. Glancing over at where Drybone stood facing the lake, his beautiful long fingers resting gently upon the wolf dog’s neck, he knew he wasn’t done.

“Pengo. Go now.”

He meant to say more, to warn Pengo of the importance of his task, and advise him to learn the lie of the land—for Robbie Dhoone knew it only too well. Also he knew he should force a reconciliation between Pengo and Dry, make them clasp hands and speak hollow words so at least a semblance of unity could be maintained. But he didn’t have the strength for it.

Pengo waited, and when no further words were forthcoming he grunted in dissatisfaction and led his horse from the lake.

He wanted to stay, Vaylo knew. Listen to what he and Dry said to each other, like a jealous husband eavesdropping on his wife. Vaylo waited until horse and rider reached the torchlight and cobbled stone of the Dhoone greatcourt before turning to face Cluff Drybannock.

“Dry. I’m—”

“Don’t say it.” Dry’s voice was quiet, but there was no comfort in it. “I’ll take a hundred north. We’ll leave at dusk tomorrow.”

“Take the full two hundred—at least until you make the hill fort livable.”

“No. I would leave half at your command.”

So much to say to each other, yet we can only speak the language of fighting men.
“If you must leave some, leave only twenty. If you judge the post a folly send word and I’ll call you back.”

Drybone nodded, once. “Chief,” he said, and Vaylo recognized the finality in it. The word was both an acknowledgment and a farewell. Dry clicked his tongue to beckon his horse and before Vaylo knew it he was on his way.

Vaylo watched him leave. The wolf dog, torn between staying with its master and trotting alongside Drybone, raced back and forth in the growing distance between them. Time passed, and eventually the great orange-and-black hound came to heel. As Vaylo scratched and pinched its ears, he saw the lake was glowing. It reminded him of the chorus to an old clannish lament.

Give me a maid at full moon, and on the banks of the Blue Dhoone we’ll dally as if it were day.

With a heavy heart the Dog Lord turned for home.

FOURTEEN

Awakening

L
ight pulsed against her eyelids, a breeze rippled across her face. Somewhere far in the distance a bird chirred, and then someone said, “She’s coming awake.”
Am I?
she thought lazily.
I really don’t think I want to. It’s so much easier to sleep.
The voice wouldn’t let her go, though. It called her name, and there was a force behind that one word that seemed to propel her straight from her dreams.

“Ash.”

She opened her eyes. Weak dawn light shrank her irises, and spots of light floated across her field of vision like bubbles in water. A face loomed over her. Dark eyes inspected her, and warm rough hands probed the pulse points in her neck. “Welcome home, daughter. I thank the gods for sending you back.”

They were the most beautiful words Ash March had ever heard. She tried to reply, but her head felt woolly and her throat was so dry it hurt.

“
Hass
, bring water.”

Water was brought, and a thin stream of it trickled into her mouth. She swallowed. Hands slid under her, raising her head and slipping something soft under her back. She saw two faces now, both stark and subtly alien, the plates of bone beneath their cheeks somehow different from her own. Ark Veinsplitter and Mal Naysayer. She was pleased when the names came to her. It meant she wasn’t mad.

She found her voice, and grimaced when it cracked and squeaked like a boy’s did when he came into manhood. “How long have I been asleep?”

The two Sull warriors exchanged a glance. “Many days,” said Ark Veinsplitter.

Oh.
Ash couldn’t think why she wasn’t more surprised. She glanced around. A crown of peaks surrounded her, purple and blue, jagged as split bone and heavily freighted with ice. She felt as if she were floating amongst them like a cloud. A fuzzy, aching cloud. Directly ahead lay the trappings of a well-laid camp: a tent stretched on poles, a horse corral, a firepit, even a line suspended over the flames for thawing game and drying clothes.
It should be cold
, she thought abruptly.
This high in the mountains, at dawn.
Yet she did not feel cold, she felt numbed and protected. Only the gentlest breezes got through.

“There was a cave,” she said as she took in the saddle of rock they were camped upon; the tufts of yellow goatgrass growing from chinks in the boulders, the rippling course of a dry streambed, the ledge that sheared away into thin air. “You took me there, into the mountain . . . I . . .”

“We bled you.”

With those three words she remembered everything. The pool. The razor on her wrist. Blood dyeing the water red. She shivered. Her arms lay beneath heavy white fox pelts and she labored to free them. They were thinner now, the veins showing like gray wire beneath her skin. Slowly she turned her palms to the sky.
Oh god. The scars.
Bands of livid pink scar tissue crossed her wrists.

“
Hass
, breathe the blue.”

Mal Naysayer rose and walked toward the horse corral. Ash saw the bright glint of metal as he drew his letting knife. She did not want to see as he knelt before the breathtaking blue stallion and sliced open the skin above its coffin bone, but she found she couldn’t look away. Horse blood bubbled from the gash, and the Sull warrior moved swiftly to catch it in a copper bowl. Mal’s hands were gentle upon the horse’s calf as he massaged the vein to keep it open. Ash couldn’t believe how still and calm the horse was; its great sculpted head held as steady as if it were being shoed. The bowl filled quickly, and Mal set it down whilst he stanched and then greased the wound. Before retrieving the bowl, his lips moved as he spoke words of thanks or blessing.

Ash wasn’t surprised when he brought her the bowl. “Drink,” he said, in his low-timbred voice. “Grow your blood.”

Ash took the steaming bowl in both hands, smelling the sugary, grassy odor of horse. She did not want to drink it, and had a brief desire to tell Mal that she hadn’t agreed to have her lifeblood drained for it to be replaced with horse blood. Yet when she brought the warm liquid to her lips a terrible craving overcame her, and she drank greedily, letting riverlets of blood spill down her chin in her haste. Only when she’d drained the bowl did her normal senses return. Sheepishly, she offered the empty vessel to the Naysayer.

“It is the iron,” he explained. “Your body thirsts for it.”

“You must sleep now,” Ark said, standing. “We will speak when you are rested.”

But I don’t want to rest
, Ash protested. But just as quickly she felt a wave of lethargy pass over her, weighing her eyelids and making her exhale. The horse blood was a delicious heaviness in her stomach, the fox pelts as soft as breath against her skin. She slept.

When she woke the sun was gone. The glow from the fire created a cave of light around the camp. Mal Naysayer was butchering a carcass, a huge bird-shaped thing, skinned and slick with blood. He used a broad cleaver to smash open the skull and hack off the feet. Ark Veinsplitter was a short distance from the camp, sitting upon the ledge that jutted out into the dark mountain night, a woven rug pulled like a cloak around his shoulders, his gaze directed northward to the great white star.

Ash rose cautiously, testing her legs before allowing them to bear her weight. She felt she had sponge for muscle, and it was really just as well she was light as a feather, since a feather seemed to be the limit of what they could lift. Mal Naysayer paused in his butchering to indicate a rocky depression screened by oilbushes to the rear of the camp. The jacks. Ash found she had no embarrassment within her, and calmly found a place to urinate. She wore no smallclothes, just a shift of coarse wool and the fox pelts, and it was easy to pull up her skirts and pee. When she was done she returned to Mal Naysayer, and received a beaker of water and a flatcake crusted with seeds. She ate in silence, watching Mal smash individual bird vertebrae to get at the pink marrow.

“Walk now,” he said, after a time. “Work your legs before we eat.”

She knew a dismissal when she heard one, and stood and looked around. There didn’t appear to be anywhere particular to walk to, since the camp was sited hard against the mountain face, and boulders and dark crevasses formed natural boundaries, limiting the number of paths a girl could take. Overhead, clouds sailed silently between the stars. The moon was somewhere, cloaked from view though close to full, judging by the diffused and silvery light that backlit the sky. Ash began walking a circuit of the camp, heading first for the corral to greet the horses. It occurred to her that she could now feel the cold when earlier she could not.
Sull sorcery?
she wondered, remembering how once she had seen Sarga Veys push back the mist on the Black Spill. Had Ark or the Naysayer pushed back the cold to keep her warm?

She decided she didn’t want to know, and let her mind fill instead with the warmth and companionship of the three Sull horses. They had woken from sleep to greet her, and now pushed their warm dark noses forward for her to touch. It was good to stand there, by the canvas-hung posts, and speak nonsense horsy stuff to three enormous beasts. It healed a little of the strangeness that had become her life.

When she was ready she made her way to Ark Veinsplitter. The ledge was a pointed spar of granite jutting out from the mountain, and when Ash stepped upon it she could see nothing else before her, only sky. A dizzying sense of displacement made her lean toward the edge.

“Sit,” warned Ark Veinsplitter, without looking around. “I do not think you are ready to lean into the wind just yet.”

Ash sat, a safe distance from the edge, her heart beating strongly. “What do you mean?”

“There are some I have known who consider it a rite of manhood to stand upon a ledge such as this and wait until the updrafts rise. When they feel the warm air upon their cheeks they lean into it, and let the wind push them back to standing.”

“That doesn’t sound like such a good idea.”

“We have lost some that way,” Ark conceded.

“So it’s a test of being Sull?”

Ark shook his head. “No. Of being alive.” She noticed for the first time there was gray in his sable hair. “The moon burns full this night. Soon it will show itself and we shall begin.”

A speck of fear moved in Ash’s chest. She wanted no more cutting.

The Far Rider must have sensed her fear for he said, “Tonight you begin learning the ways of the Sull.” For the first time he looked at her, his dark eyes appraising. “What? Did you think the dreams they sent you were all there is?”

How did he know about the dreams when she barely remembered them herself? The images were fleeting, blurred. A silver shore. A land lit by moonlight. Flashes of battles so strange and horrific they could not belong in this world. Chilled, Ash gathered the fox pelts close. The stars suddenly seemed cold and bright.

The two sat in silence, watching them, and after a time the scent of roasting game bird drifted across on threads of smoke. Ash swallowed. She had a sense that she was moving through the sky, that the clouds were static and she was passing beneath them. Dimly she became aware that the moon was revealing itself, its rays sliding like fingers across her face.

“Light the flame.”

Ash was drawn back by Ark’s words. It took her a moment to understand that he was speaking to Mal Naysayer, not to her, and that the Naysayer had joined them on the ledge and was crouching a short distance behind them. Ash felt a small thrill of unease. She had not heard him come.

Mal turned the key on a strangely shaped pewter lantern, releasing a hiss of what sounded like gas. He held an ember from the firepit above the lamp’s chimney, and a strong yellow flame burst into life. As she watched, Mal adjusted the valve at the chimney’s base and the nature of the flame changed. It blued, growing smaller and fiercer,
siss
ing softly like the wind. Ash could see halos of color within it; pale lilacs and vivid blues. Only the outer corona was yellow now.