A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) (44 page)

The Sull Far Rider dropped the sickle and the chain’s slack upon the ice. “Rise,” he commanded.

Ash sat up but did not stand. She was shaking, and she felt betrayed. Raising her hand to her jaw she went to stanch the flow of blood.

“No,” he warned her. “Let it run. It is
Dras Xaxu.
The First Cut.”

She touched her jaw and brought bloody fingers to the light. “I’ve been bled before.”

“Not with Sull blood.”

He offered his hand, and after she’d made him wait a moment she took it and let him pull her upright. Ice crystals shed from her furs floated between them like dust. “Why did you do that?” she demanded.

“We are Sull, and we stand ready to fight. Before a child comes to manhood or womanhood blood must be drawn in friendly combat. We wound ourselves so that we might deprive our enemies of the satisfaction of delivering the First Cut.”

Ash frowned at the Far Rider. She wanted to know why he’d chosen now to cut her. Who did he fear might cut her first? But his face was hard and his eyes issued a warning from their deep wells of bone.
Do not ask me more.

Reluctantly, she picked up the sickle and chain. Her arm was sore and blood was trickling down her throat, and she thought for a moment she might like to scream at him.
Why do you hold so much back? You made me Sull—trust me.

As she whirled the chain overhead Ark Veinsplitter moved to where the horses were feeding on oiled millet and pulled one of the birchwood corral posts from the ice. Planting the post closer to Ash, he bade her strike it with the chain. Tendons in Ash’s wrist strained like guide ropes as she fought the torque. She cast the chain a beat too late, and the metal teardrop skimmed wide of the post and swung violently back toward her. The weight struck her spine, punching air from her lungs and gouging out a wedge of lynx fur.

Ark Veinsplitter watched coolly as she struggled to catch her breath. “Cast the chain properly and you can trap an enemy’s arm, his weapon, his horse’s leg. The weight can kill a man if it strikes with enough force in the temple or throat. And when the chain itself is held taut between two hands it becomes a shield, able to deflect an oncoming blade.”

The Far Rider approached Ash and took the weight from her. Stepping backward, he reeled out the length of the chain until it was fully extended between them, and then dropped the weight onto the ice. “Watch,” he directed, drawing his sword. Close to six feet of Sull steel struck like lightning in front of her face as he wielded the blade from the distance created by the chain. Strike followed strike so swiftly that the space crackled with discharging energy, and the gashes carved out by the blade left afterimages hanging in the air. Yet the edge did not touch her.

“It is
Naza Thani
. The Nine Safe Steps. Keep the length of the chain between you and your enemy and their swords cannot reach you.”

Ash nodded stiffly, unable to take her gaze from Ark’s sword. The point of the blade moved so close to her eye she could see the crystalized “x” where the edges met. The Far Rider wanted her afraid. It was a test, and she feared failure more than getting hurt. She was Ash March, Foundling. She’d been abandoned once. She wouldn’t give this man before her reason to walk away. Tilting her chin upward she stood unmoving and unblinking under Ark Veinsplitter’s onslaught.

Ark’s eyes narrowed, and he executed a series of forward thrusts, shearing off stray hairs that had risen around her face. Abruptly he halted, and recouched his sword. He was breathing hard, and when his voice came it was not gentle. “You should have stepped back. When I thrust forward I took a step toward you.
Naza Thani
was breached. My sword could have taken your head.”

Ash felt her cheeks burn. She’d mistaken the nature of the test. And failed.

The expression on the Far Rider’s ice-tanned face remained cold as he turned toward the corral. “Practice striking the post while I break camp.”

She watched him saddle the gray and tighten its cinches. The wind skirled around the stallion’s forelegs, raising whirl-winds of ice that would have chilled another horse to the bone. Not the gray, though. It was protected by deep feathering that fanned out from its knees in long, silky skirts. Ash pulled her arms around her chest, suddenly cold. She didn’t want to pick up the sickle and chain and start again. She wanted to run to the gray and nuzzle him and slip bare hands beneath his mane to feel the warmth hidden there.

By the time the Far Rider had stowed the corral and equipped and watered both horses Ash had mastered striking the post. It was easy, really, as long as you didn’t loose the chain too late. Once the chain was spinning rapidly it coiled around anything thrown in its path. The noise the links made as they wrapped around the birchwood post made hairs rise on Ash’s neck. It was the sound of a snake rustling through grass. And then the weight fell with the soft
thunk
of a sprung trap, locking the chain into place. Aware that Ark’s gaze was now upon her, Ash grabbed the chain in both hands and ripped the trapped post from the ice.

The Far Rider nodded, once. “Clean the chain and sheathe it. We need to be gone from this place.”

Telling herself she didn’t really expect praise, Ash did his bidding. The sun was rising swiftly now, bouncing rainbows of light off the ice. The frozen surface beneath her feet cracked and popped like firewood just set alight. Last night Ark had explained that the rock underlying the ice field was black chert, the same stone they knapped flints from, and its hard glassy core provided poor drainage for standing water. Pockets of ice melted during the day and refroze at night, as the entire valley held water like a bowl. It wasn’t drinkable, for the water was old and gray, and poisons leached up from the rock. Looking down at the ice, at the withered things suspended just below the surface—the ancient pine needles where trees no longer stood, the claw of a predator, yellow and segmented like a maggot, the slivers of flint scattered like fish scales on a beach—Ash suddenly knew where she was.

The Great Want.

She thought she might shiver, but the bones inside her spine locked into place. The Great Want. The vast nothingness that lay at the top of all maps of the Northern Territories. No one knew how far it stretched, only that no man who had gone in search of its end had ever returned. Audlin Crieff, twenty-third surlord of Spire Vanis and Forsworn knight, had been lost here. He’d been taken by madness while on pilgrimage to the Lake of Lost Men, and had simply left his tent one morning and walked east. They had searched for him for ten days and ten nights but his body was never found.

Ash sat the Sull horse that was her mount when the Naysayer was away on the blue, and turned her thoughts elsewhere. The white gelding was a few hands shorter than Ark’s gray, with a deep girth and muscular legs. Panniers mounted on its rump and shoulders held tent felts, ropes and poles, and the many other items required for raising camp. It was a heavy load, and Ash worried about being an added burden to the gentle beast. “Sorry, boy,” she murmured, rubbing its nose.

“He was bred to bear aurochs home from the hunt,” Ark said, surprising her by swinging the gray alongside the white. “Your weight will not trouble him.”

Ash nodded uneasily. The Far Rider was always watching her.

“Reach down under his stifle.”

Puzzled, she obeyed, running her hand along the horse’s belly until it met the muscled ramp of its thigh. A leather trace ran the length of its torso, a harness of some kind, and she wondered at its purpose.

“Do you feel the buckle?”

She found it, yet it felt wrong to her fingers, lumpy and unguarded, and there was an extra piece of leather sticking out.

“If we are pursued pull the strap.” The Far Rider looked ahead as he spoke, as if what he said wasn’t as important as the task of crossing the ice. Ash wasn’t fooled. She could hear the intensity in his voice. “If the Naysayer or I are engaged in combat pull the strap. It will release the horse’s burdens and allow you to flee at speed. He has been
maygi
-spoke. He will carry you to safety and only return on my say.”

“And what if you can no longer ‘say’?” The words were out before Ash could stop them, and her first instinct was to soften them with an apology or more words. Yet she thought of her foster-father and didn’t.

Time passed and then the Far Rider said, “Then you must continue east and find the Heart Fires for yourself.” He held his head high and with great dignity, and watching him she learned something new: she had the ability to wound him.

Sobered, she asked, “What is a
maeraith
?”

“A beast of shadow.” High clouds passed over the sun. The Far Rider’s wolverine-fur-wrapped fingers did not tighten on the reins, yet some measure of tension must have passed from rider to mount, since the great Sull horse lowered its ears and twitched its tail.

Ash felt her own mount lose its rhythm. “And that was what Mal killed that day in the mountains?”

Ark nodded. “The Naysayer believes it was a sentinel, set to watch the Rift Road. It has started. Where there is one there will be others. We must be careful.”

It has started.
She felt a soft stab of pain beneath her jaw, in the place where Ark had drawn blood. “Is that why we’re traveling through the Want?”

He turned to look at her. “What do you know of the Great Want, Ash March?”

“I know we’re within it—and heading deeper.”

“Look behind. Tell me what you see.”

Ash twisted in the saddle. She saw mountains and ice and sky, and said so.

“So you see the Coastal Ranges?” She nodded, and he continued, his voice strangely controlled. “And you think it possible to stand within the Want and look out upon a landmark you know? You think it possible to say to yourself
I am in the Want and if I turn west toward those mountains I can head out whenever I choose
?” He paused, waiting for an answer.

She had none for him.

The Far Rider stretched the silence until she questioned her assumptions on many things. Satisfied by the uncertainty he had created, he resumed more gently. “We head along the edges of the Want, the margins where the land is solid and unchanging, and the stars may be trusted at night. Make no mistake, Ash March: ride north for half a day and you would be lost. Any mountains you saw then could not be trusted. Ride toward them and they could lead you in circles until your palms crack open from dryness and your horse falls lame beneath you. You do not travel through the Want, you are set adrift. We call it
Glor Skallis
. Land of Fallen Sky. Landmarks that seem solid drift like clouds. A moon appears and sheds light, and then a second looms on the horizon and you cannot know which is real and which is false. Light bends. It scatters and creates, and even the Sull cannot tell a light-made landscape from a god-made one until we touch it with our hands and say,
Here is air
or
Here is soil
.”

Ark’s words were hypnotic, spoken to the rhythmic bunching of the muscles in his horse’s shoulders, and Ash knew she was hearing things that no clansman or city man had ever heard.

“We follow the path laid out by the Naysayer. He rides ahead and around us, searching for way markers and holding us upon the edge. It is not a simple task, this holding, for the edges of
Glor Skallis
are fluid in places and a tracker must be vigilant or risk becoming lost.”

The Far Rider spoke a word to his horse, increasing its speed to a trot. Ash saw some tension in his face, and realized his thoughts were with his
hass
. She said, “He’s not just tracking, though, is he? He’s watching for them.”

Lines around Ark’s mouth tightened and he kicked the gray into a canter. Watching the space open up between them Ash suddenly feared she’d be left behind and scrambled to catch up. She’d pushed him too far. The Sull never spoke their fears out loud.

Morning passed quickly into midday. Freezing winds numbed Ash’s ears and sucked the moisture from her lips, leaving ridges that felt like scars. The sky grayed and after a time so did the ice. Boulders and the crumbled remains of petrified trees littered the path. The high clouds fled west, and a cold haze set in like the thinnest of fogs. They rode in single file, with the Far Rider taking the lead, and although Ash couldn’t see his face she sensed his constant vigilance from the stiffness of his back.

It has started.

She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in the dark. The gift of weapons, the drawing of first blood . . . even the instruction on how to release the gelding’s panniers: they were all measures taken for her protection. The Far Riders expected something to come after them, and had planned for her survival if they died.

I can’t think of it.
Opening her eyes she let the harsh light pierce her. She hated this place. The Naysayer had chosen it as an alternate route to the Rift Road, but any fool could see it wasn’t safe. They’d be better traveling through warring clanholds than this desert of mist and ice. Anger warmed her, and took away some of the fear, but it took too much energy to sustain and she felt her shoulders slump and her spine bend as day moved toward night. Inside her mitts, her fingers had stiffened into hooks, and she knew she needed to work them to prevent the sickening numbness of frostbite.

Reaching down into her lynx fur, she searched out the hide pouch that contained her waybread. She wasn’t hungry, but it gave her hands something to do.

When she looked up she saw a mounted figure on the path ahead. She stiffened, and then recognized the shape of Mal Naysayer. It was twilight and not yet full dark, and Ash couldn’t understand where he’d come from. The way ahead had been clear moments earlier.

The Naysayer trotted the blue forward, and then fell in step with his
hass
. Ash heard the two Far Riders exchange words, and then the Naysayer swung the blue north, indicating a change in their path. Ash followed. She wondered why they were heading deeper into the Want, but didn’t think she’d get an answer if she asked. The Naysayer was a hard man to read, but she thought she detected some urgency in the way he handled his horse.