A Sword From Red Ice (14 page)

"Nan'll be grateful for them," Hammie
said bluffly. Bram guessed he must be hungry—five days was a
long time to go without proper food—but wasn't surprised when
the armsman simply tucked the pack under his cloak, unopened. Pride
would not allow him to reveal how much he needed to eat. When the boy
began questing beneath Hammie's cloak, Hammie said firmly, "Later."

Bram and the armsman waited out the rest of the
hour in companionable silence, stamping their feet against the cold
and blowing on their hands. Hoarfrost was forming, and Vaylo's
grandson amused himself by sliding across the mud on fragile rafts of
ice. When Bram judged the time was up he nodded at Hammie Faa. "Have
a safe journey back to the Bluddhold."

For the briefest moment Hammie Faa's face went
blank. Recovering quickly he nodded and mumbled, "Aye. Gods be
with you on the road." Placing a guiding hand on Aaron's back,
he struck a course due east.

Bram watched them leave. As man and boy
disappeared beneath the curve of the hill, a wolf howled in the
distance. A reminder from the Dog Lord. Set them free.

Shaking his sword hand to get the blood flowing,
Bram hiked up the slope. His entire body felt battered and used up,
and the thought of spending the night searching for Guy's runaway
stallion was almost too much to bear. Just to sit and drink some
water would have been nice. When he saw that both Guy and Jordie were
mounted, reins in hands and visors lowered, he guessed that he
wouldn't be sitting down any time soon.

Guy trotted Jordie's stallion downhill. The left
stirrup had been unbuckled and Guy's bandaged foot dangled loose
against the creature's belly. Rainwater soaked into Guy's cloak had
stiffened to ice, freezing the badly rumpled fabric into lumps. When
he spoke his breath whitened in word-length bursts. "You'll have
to make your own way from here on, Cormac. We're heading for the
Fly."

The Fly was a shallow river that crossed the
Dhoonehold two days southeast of the roundhouse. The old watchtower
that defended the raised crossing was known as the Stonefly. One of
the first orders Robbie had given upon seizing the Dhooneseat was
concerning the regarrisoning of the tower. A score of
hatchetmen—hammermen and axmen—now patrolled both the
north and south rivershores and the forest beyond. If Guy and Jordie
rode hard through the night it was possible they could reach the Fly
by dawn. Guy intended to set the hatchetmen on the Dog Lord's trail.

"We're not breaking the agreement,"
Jordie said quietly, drawing level on Bram's mare. "We agreed to
set them free and not pursue them, and . . . and . . ." Frowning
hard at the reins in his hands, Jordie stumbled to a halt.

"We're not pursuing them," Guy said
firmly, some of his old laughter returning. "We're alerting
others to their presence."

Bram could tell Jordie didn't want to catch his
eye. There was nothing that interesting about his reins. Jordie knew
that although they were upholding the word of the agreement, they
were still breaking faith. And then there was the matter of an
earlier agreement, one concerning the safe delivery of Robbie's
brother to the Milkhouse. Both Jordie and Guy had promised to escort
Bram on the journey southeast and protect him from the dangers that
awaited lone travelers on the road. Maimed Men, city men, trappers,
bandits, enemy clansmen and even enemy Dhoonesmen had been spotted on
the Milkway. Not to mention the fact that a boy traveling alone might
simply fall from his horse into a ditch, injuring himself so badly he
couldn't get up.

Well I'll just have to be careful where I put my
feet. Oddly enough Bram found himself too tired to care about being
abandoned. "And my horse?"

Guy made an exasperated puffing sound as if the
answer were glaringly obvious. "You'll have the best mount in
the party—mine."

If I can find it. Bram considered mentioning the
fact that Guy's stallion had run loose over two hours ago and could
be halfway to Blue Creek by now.

"It's not a gift, mind, I'll expect him to be
returned within the month." Guy expertly turned Jordie's horse.
"Jordie. We're off. The sooner Tiny learns the Dog Lord is alive
and on his way back to Bludd the better."

Jordie shifted his weight forward in the saddle,
preparing his mount for a swift start. "You can always follow us
back, Bram," he said gently. "You know, run and try to keep
pace."

Bram shook his head firmly. Even if such a thing
were possible, Robbie would not want him back.

"Gods' luck, Bram Cormac." Jerking his
head in farewell, Guy Morloch dug iron into horseflesh and sped off.

Jordie hesitated a moment and then gave the mare
its head. The little horse raced down the slope, its hooves gouging
divots from the mud in its eagerness to catch up with the stallion.

Bram sat down on his cloaktails and watched them.
He was dead-tired, and relieved to have them gone. After a time he
began massaging his numbed hand. Strange tingles still persisted,
and although he knew it was probably nothing he was a bit worried all
the same. He very much liked his hand.

Part of him was still trying to figure out how Guy
could have made such a big mistake. Hammie Faa had barely managed to
cover his confusion when Bram wished him a safe journey to Bludd.
The Dog Lord wasn't heading home. He was heading north to the
Dhoonewall. Guy had assumed that the Dog Lord was south of the
roundhouse because he meant to follow the old Ruinwood trail east
through Dregg. Where in fact the Bludd chief and his companions were
circling the roundhouse before eventually turning north. The tunnel
leading from the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes must have deposited them
some distance south, leaving Vaylo with the difficult job of guiding
his party through land overrun by enemies.

Bram decided the Dog Lord was more than up to the
task. Knowledge was interesting, Bram concluded, rising. Once you
were in possession of it you could choose to pass it along or keep it
to yourself. Power lived there just as surely as it lived in a
swinging hammer. Only you didn't need muscle to wield it.

Thoughtful, he headed uphill. His throat was raw
with thirst. Luckily Jordie had thought to unbuckle the saddlebags
from the mare, and Bram found a waterskin and other supplies. As he
drank he began planning for the night ahead. It occurred to him that
it would be a good idea to spread feed around his bedroll. That way
if Guy's stallion decided to return while he slept it would likely
stick around until morning. Unable to locate horse feed, he used
porridge oats instead. When he was done, he pushed a wedge of rye
bread between his teeth and chewed. It tasted like wood. Swallowing
forcefully, he drew the watered steel from its sheath. The edge
needed oiling. Jackdaw Thundy, the old swordmaster at Dhoone, would
whack a boy with the flat of his blade if he dared leave a sword
untended after rainfall. Even the pride of Dhoone—hard and
lustrous, twice-fired watered steel—was not immune to canker.

Frowning, Bram watched as moonlight flowed along
the whorls and ripples in the blade. Robbie had given him the lesser
of the two swords. The one he'd kept for himself was known as a
horsestopper. A full-size battle sword with a two-handed grip that
had the length and heft necessary to impale an armored warhorse, it
was forged from the highest grade of watered steel, known as mirror
blue. A blade made of mirror blue was paler and more glassy than one
forged from traditional watered steel. Light shone through its point.

No light shone through the point of Bram's blade,
but that didn't bother him. Truth was he preferred the smaller,
lighter footsword with its simple cruciform handguard and the hare
head surmounted on its pommel. His father had commissioned the
ice-hare pommel as a tribute to his wife upon her death. Tilda
Cormac had been the best wire-trapper in Dhoone, and when her husband
was away for the winter on long patrols she had kept her family fed.

It was Robbie who had benefited the most. Tilda
had always given her stepson the choicest cuts of meat: the fatty
loin from the rabbit's hack, the coon liver, the porcupine's heart.
Robbie had been born to her husband's first wife yet she had reared
him as her own. Bram often wondered what she had received in return.
Robbie had treated her like a servant, never showing her the respect
due to a stepmother, "Elena Dhoone is my mother. Not you,"
he would scream when she wouldn't let him have his way. "You're
just a rabbit-trapper from Gnash."

Even though he didn't much feel like it, Bram
unhooked the weapon care pouch from his belt and began working yellow
tung oil into the sword. Tilda's sword. Robbie had been set to hand
it over to the Milk chief in payment for the Castlemen, and Bram
wondered how his brother had managed to get it back. His memories of
what happened that night in the Brume Hall after Robbie sold him to
Wrayan Castlemilk were not clear. Perhaps Robbie had renegotiated the
gift of swords, but Bram doubled it. A dozen watered-steel swords had
been promised. A dozen had been delivered. Bram had a shadowy memory
of Robbie kneeling quietly by the sword pile and sliding out Tilda's
sword. If the memory was true he would have had to replace it with
another blade. Why he had gone to such trouble was hard to know.

Bram decided not to think about it. Nerve endings
in his fingers had begun to fire randomly as his hand came back to
life, and he flexed the muscles to keep blood pumping.

He found himself imaging Guy and Jordie arriving
at the Stonefly. Tired and breathless, they'd hasten through the
garrison eager to speak with the head hatchetman, Tiny Pitt. Search
parties would be dispatched. Messengers would be sent north to
Dhoone: the Dog Lord was in the Dhoonewilds, heading east. The
knowledge that Guy and Jordie would soon send a company of hatchetmen
east when the Dog Lord was heading north should have made Bram feel
something as a Dhoonesman. Yet it didn't. Instead he felt a small
stirring of something else. It was good to have knowledge that no one
else but you possessed.

"Castlemilk." Bram spoke the word out
loud, testing.

His allegiances were shifting and he no longer
knew which clan he owed loyalty to anymore.

The Racklands

A night heron shrieked in the distance as Ash
March crouched by the shore and drank. Moonlight had transformed the
Flow into a river of mercury, silver-black and shiny as metal.
Hopefully not dangerous to drink. Ash tasted the river as she
swallowed; oily and strange, not quite water anymore.

Standing, she wrapped her lynx-fur coat around her
chest and shivered, though she wasn't really cold. It was an hour
after sunset and the sky glowed dimly in the west. In the east a
half-moon hung low between sentinel cedars. The moon was closer here,
she'd noticed. Stars too. The night itself was blacker, richer, as if
darkness had been distilled to its highest proof. Ash could feel it
settling against her skin and siphoning through the lenses in her
eyes. The land she stood in was ruled by the Sull: night and day had
irrevocably changed.

A breeze set the cedar boughs swaying as she hiked
up the shore, the sharp, spicy scent of their needles was released in
a sudden burst like a seedpod ejecting its spores. The smell reminded
Ash of Mask Fortress, of closed boxes, locked chests. Secrets. She
had never seen such massive trees. Their boughs swept wide in vast
shaggy circles that claimed the space of a dozen lesser trees. None
of their needles were green. Silver and blue and a shade of dusky
purple she had no name for, they had abandoned the colors of normal
growing things.

Switching her path to avoid the too-dried remains
of something that might have been a fox. Ash returned to her
makeshift camp. She was muscle-tired but restless, and she did not
want to sleep. Seven days had passed since the stand at Floating
Bridge and not an hour, awake or sleeping, had gone by where she had
not relived the events of that night in her mind. In a way the
nightmares were easier. There was something to be said for watching
everything unfold in painstaking detail in her dreams. At least she
was asleep. At least her dream self wasn't constantly asking: What
could I have done to save Ark's life?

Ash inhaled deeply, found herself glancing back at
the fox. Ark| Veinsplitter, Son of the Sull and Chosen Far Rider, was
dead. Brought down by an unmade pack of wolves, torn limb from limb
by creatures who no longer had red blood pumping through their hearts
or warm flesh coddling their bones. Daughter, he had called her. She
would never hear him say that word again.

Deep within the overhang of her coat sleeve Ash's
hands made fists. I should never have stepped onto the bridge.

The memory of that night was as clear and sharp as
a splinter of glass. Their party of three—Ark, Mal Naysayer and
she herself—had been pursued by creatures from the Blind. From
the moment she had become Sull in the mountain cavern they had chased
her, and two hours south of Hell's Town they finally brought her to
ground. It might have been possible to outrun them if it hadn't been
for the river. The wolves had cornered them on the north bank of the
Flow, where the road met the Moating Bridge. Horses could not be
ridden at a gallop across the four-foot-wide boards, so Ark and Mal
had turned to make a stand. Her mistake had been to ride onto the
bridge ahead of them. She could see it all: the wolves closing in,
the Naysayer drawing his six-foot longsword and stepping forward; and
Ark . . . Ark pulling the linchpin from the Floating Bridge, and
telling her how she had made him proud as the bridge began to float
away. She and her horse had sailed east on powerful river currents,
buoyed by pontoons that bounced like fishing floats in the water,
unable to do anything but watch as Ark and the Naysayer battled the
Unmade.