A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) (35 page)

“Just you and me,” he murmured before he pulled away.

And then Clewis Reed’s hands were upon her waist, hefting her into the back of the wagon, and pulling the oiled canvas closed behind her. In the sudden darkness she could see nothing and smell much. Men had pissed here once, and the air was scratchy with hay spores and sawdust. She smelled the food Raina had packed for her before her eyes could make out the shape of the pack. Honey cakes, roast goose and fresh bread. A supper fit for a chief, not a child.

It was a shock when Druss cracked the whip and the wagon lurched into motion. Everything except her and her packs had been tied down, and Effie scrambled for something secure to hold on to. She could feel the wagon turning, hear Druss’s voice as he coaxed a better pace from the ponies. Wheel axles squealed underfoot, and everywhere wood creaked and shuddered as the wagon rolled down the bank.

As her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, Effie leaned forward to push back the canvas flap. Then something stopped her. She knew what she’d see if she looked out and knew how it would make her feel. Better to go like this. Knowing Drey was standing at the top of the bank, waiting until the wagon passed beyond sight was one thing. Seeing it was something else.

Settling herself on the pallet Druss had constructed, Effie gave herself time to grow accustomed to the motion of the wagon. Looking down the length of the wagon bed, she saw she wasn’t the only cargo Druss was hauling south. Sealed crates and lidded wicker baskets were stowed to the ribbing. Idly, she tried to open one of the baskets but found it bound with knotted rope. She sniffed it. No smell. Lacking anything better to do she untied the cloth bag Mad Binny had given her. Inside she found comfrey, woundheal, lily of the valley, cowslip, barberry, witch hazel and willow: all tied neatly into little sprigs. Effie smiled. Mad Binny had given her the basics of a healer’s chest.

The day wore on, and the wagon turned onto a flat trail and the ride eased enough for Effie to feel hungry. She ate three honey cakes and one goose wing—in that order. Afterwards she felt thirsty but she couldn’t find any water, and felt shy about calling out to Druss or Clewis Reed. Pulling Raina’s blankets about her, she settled down to sleep.

It was growing dark, and the gentle rolling of the wagon made her drowsy. Effie thought about what Drey had said as she drifted into sleep. If she looked like Mam and Drey looked like Da . . . then who did Raif look like?

Her dreams had no answers, and when she woke later to the sudden stilling of the wagon, she’d forgotten even asking the question.

SEVENTEEN

Maimed Men

“H
ow about a trade?” Raif said to Stillborn as they walked the little black pony down a steep gorge. “You tell me something I want to know and I’ll tell you something in return.”

Stillborn thought carefully on this. It was something Raif had come to appreciate about the Maimed Man during the three days they’d been traveling together: Stillborn was one of the few men he’d ever met who actually
thought
about what you said and then thought some more about his answer. After a time, Stillborn nodded. “I get to ask first. And I don’t guarantee an answer if I don’t like the sound of your question.”

Raif nodded gravely as if he’d considered the counteroffer carefully. They both knew he had no bargaining power here, but there were rules of form to be maintained. “Go ahead.”

Stillborn was quiet for some time as he led the pony down a slope of crumbling shale. It was mid-morning, or close to it, and a tide of dark clouds hid the sun. Sharp little winds gusted along the gorge wall, rolling scree and uprooting weeds. They were close to the bottom of the gorge, and there was little to see except cliffs of rock rising in warped lines above them. There had been water here once, Raif guessed, for the lower rocks were smooth and the scree at the bottom had been rounded into pebbles. Overhead, the cliffs were rougher and the making of the world was exposed. Tiers of stone, minerals, sand, fossils and ancient lava flows could be read like history within the rock.

When they reached a level platform just above the detritus-filled trough at the bottom of the gorge, Stillborn turned to eye Raif. As always, there was the shock of seeing the man’s face, the flesh stretched and seamed as if someone had cut a strip out of his face and sewn together the remains. Stillborn saw Raif’s reaction, and a hard sort of weariness showed briefly in his eyes.

He surprised Raif by asking, “Do you have brothers?”

Raif nodded. “One.”

“And do you love him?” Something else was now lighting Stillborn’s eyes, but Raif couldn’t tell what. Hunger, perhaps. But that made no sense.

Raif thought of Drey. He said quietly, “Yes.”

“And have you ever hurt him, this brother who you love?”

Here was the question Raif was trading for; he could see it in the way Stillborn put his hand on the pony. There was too much tension in the fingers for a man just patting a horse. But what to say about Drey? What brothers didn’t hurt each other growing up? Fights and irritation were the other side of love. Still, Raif knew what Stillborn meant by the question: He didn’t want to hear if Raif had bruised Drey’s shins or called him names in anger. No. It was the larger thing Stillborn was concerned with: Have you betrayed his love and trust? Raif recalled Drey that day on the greatcourt, stepping forward to second his brother’s oath. The old pain moved like a sword tip in his chest. “I’ve hurt him. Yes.”

Stillborn nodded very slowly, as if Raif had given him an answer to a problem he had considered for years. “Yes, that’s how it is,” was all he said. Reaching inside one of the pony’s saddlebags, he took out the last of the roasted elk. The tenderloin was lean and bloody, and Stillborn bit into it like a sausage. “Well,” he said through red teeth. “Claim your debt.”

Raif considered his question. Strange how he no longer thought he’d got a bargain. “How did you stop me,” he said, “when I went for your . . . chest . . . with the log? Your sword was too far back, and I was moving too fast.”

The Maimed Man grinned. “Hold this,” he said, thrusting the tenderloin into Raif’s right hand. With a lightning-fast movement he pulled a small round-faced hammer from his belt. “This beauty did the damage.” Stillborn nodded toward Raif’s head. “Can draw her faster than a Sull draws his sword—and with me left hand, no less. Soon as you reached for the log, I smelled trouble. You had that mad look in your eye, you know, the one that says
You’re mine, bastard
. So I drew the old bone-cracker and had it moving by the time you charged. Your fault you looked only to the sword. ’Course, it’s only to be expected. Clansmen never imagine a man will fight two-handed. Now the Sull are another thing. Sword and longknife, that’s how they fight in a bind. Beautiful it is to look at. Blade and shield. The tricky part is knowing which weapon is playing the part of the blade and which is the shield. And when you’ve got that figured they go and switch it on you—right in the middle of a fight. Right unsporting it is.”

Raif looked at the hammer. It looked like something Longhead would use to knock in nails.

“You’re right. It’s no pretty longknife, that’s for sure. But I find nothing works better when it comes to breaking a man’s head.” Stillborn’s gaze was almost loving as he returned the hammer to his belt. “I’m renaming it in your honor, by the way. I think I’ll call it Skull.”

Raif couldn’t quite manage to look honored. For the first time since they’d started down the gorge wall the pain of his missing finger threatened to unman him. It flared white-hot where Stillborn had cut with the Forsworn sword. Raif sucked in breath.
Don’t look
, he warned himself.
Nothing to see but bandages and fresh air
. But still he looked, down at his left hand, where the smallest of his fingers had been halved. It had stopped bleeding some time during the second night, but fluid still wept from the stitches and the bandages were damp. Stillborn had been careful with the skin, making his first incision just below the nail and then rolling back the skin to the middle knuckle so there was enough to cover the bone stump. Raif had not been conscious during the stitching. Blinding pain had robbed him of his wits. He awoke later in the night from a nightmare where his hand was being eaten by the monster the Listener had shown him beneath the ice.

Reality was worse. That first night the knuckle swelled to the size of a kidney, so full of blood the skin seemed almost black. Now the skin
was
black, necrotizing around the edges of the cut. Raif hadn’t slept through the night in three days. And he did not expect to sleep through this one when it came.

Stillborn saw the whiteness of his face. “Had to do it, Raif. Either that or let them take you for an arm.”

With an effort of will Raif mastered the pain. “I see
you
’re whole.”

“Me? I’m fuck-ugly. That counts as a missing leg.”

There was nothing Raif could say to that, and he handed the tenderloin back to Stillborn to free up his hand for the waterskin. Raif drank while the Maimed Man ate. They’d filled the waterskins at a small rill they’d found emptying into the gorge. The water was salty and left him just as thirsty as before. “When do we get to the Rift?”

Stillborn wagged his head at the cliff wall. “This
is
the Rift. Beginnings of it, anyway. Land splits in two. This trench keeps getting deeper and deeper until there’s no end to it. Goes right down to hell, they say, and the abyss that lies beneath.”

Raif glanced down at the gorge floor with its house-deep litter of scree, petrified trees, elk antlers, bones and rocks. “Shouldn’t we be heading up, then?”

“No. We’re on the right path. Be there before dark.” Stillborn smacked the pony’s rump. “Come on, girl. You know the way from here.”

The little party moved forward, and Raif realized that they were indeed on some sort of path. At first he thought it was just a natural staggering of the cliff, but when they rounded a projection and he saw the path curving eastward for leagues, keeping its level while the gorge dropped away beneath, he began to wonder. Could this have been cut by man? For some reason he thought of the Listener, and the people he had spoken of. The Old Ones.

The path was narrow, but it didn’t seem important until the drop grew deep enough to kill anyone falling into it. Raif felt the updrafts rising, drying his face and setting his damaged hand on fire. He was walking behind Stillborn and the pony, and he found himself hugging the cliff. After an hour’s trekking the drop became so deep and sheer that Raif could no longer see where it ended. Shadows had taken the place of the gorge floor.
A man wouldn’t just be killed if he fell now
, he thought.
He’d be lost.

Stillborn and the pony seemed unaffected by the danger. The Maimed Man had stripped off his makeshift armor and now walked in felted tunic and kilt. The Forsworn sword hung at his waist, the chunk of rock crystal mounted on its pommel gleaming darkly in the gray light. He was eating again, this time some of the crackling he’d built a special hot fire to fry last night. The matched bullhorns encircling his forearms had been oiled with the leftover grease, and the black horn looked rich and newly taken. Raif watched him. He knew Stillborn was a strong man, and quick, but he still wasn’t sure how the Maimed Man had managed to best him. Never before had Raif had a heart-kill thwarted. He’d thought, foolishly perhaps, that once he had a man’s heart in his sights that was it. Now he knew different. He wasn’t as invincible as he’d thought.

Unsure how that made him feel, Raif trekked the next few hours in silence, his head low, his thoughts circling around his past.

Afternoon darkened into dusk, and what little moisture the air held began condensing on lone weeds that grew from cracks in the path. Scents deepened with the coming of night, and Raif could smell metal ores bleeding salts into the rock. When the wind changed he detected pitch smoke. The scent deepened as the path rose and swung out to accommodate a great bulge in the Rift Wall. Raif felt vulnerable in the darkness, too exposed to the Eye of God in this place where the continent split. Even Stillborn seemed to feel something, for his steps were less hearty and his hand went often to the pony for comfort.

The sky was alive with stars, thousands upon thousands, teeming like ants across the night. Raif watched them, noticing what he had never seen before; not all of them shone blue-white. Some were red as blood.

When the small party rounded the curve in the Rift Wall, Raif was not prepared for what he saw. Hundreds of torches burned in a city honeycombed into the cliff. Immediately Raif thought of the time he’d broken into a termite mound with Bitty Shank, recalling how the dust had risen like smoke as swarms of white insects poured from the break. He remembered the cross section he’d broken into with the pine log; the warren of passageways and cells that had riddled the mound like mine shafts. That’s what the city looked like: the inside of that mound.

The Rift Wall was tiered into vast ledges hewn from live rock. Scores of caverns pocked the cliff wall, their interiors dark as pits, their outer rims cratered and flaking. The ledges and caverns were accessed by a shambling web of stone steps, cane ladders, rope bridges and hoists. Great portions of the city had caved in to rubble, and further to the east an entire tier had collapsed, creating boulders the size of barns. Cracks ran and forked through the remaining structures like fault lines, black as the Rift itself.

Raif’s gaze traveled across deep-set halls and stone arcades. Nothing he had ever seen, not even the city of Spire Vanis, was less like clan than this place.

“Aye. It’s pretty in the torchlight,” Stillborn said, continuing forward.

Raif had little choice but to follow him. As they drew nearer he saw Stillborn was heading toward a cleared space in the middle terrace where a massive bonfire burned, and men flickered in and out of darkness as they moved around the flames.

Suddenly a sharp retort sounded on the path ahead, a crack like shattering glass. Fire flared into existence twenty paces ahead of the pony. Stillborn shouted something at the top of his voice as he worked furiously to calm the little horse. Raif stood his ground. He guessed that whatever substance had been dropped or fired had been done so expertly, to both warn and illuminate the intruders. During the brief seconds when heat and light touched his face he knew he was being watched.