A Sword From Red Ice (46 page)

"Raif," he said a few minutes later as
Raif stood in the mouth of the cave. "Sleep. There's blankets
and a bowl of water for your feet. I'll be out on the ledge,
scratching up a bit of a fire. I'll see you in the morning."
Moving briskly, the Maimed Man passed Raif and left him to the dim
quiet of the cliff cave.

Raif sat on the pile of blankets and pulled off
his boots. Not looking too carefully, he sank his feet into the
shallow bowl of cool water. Bits of rags that had stuck to the
blisters slowly soaked free.

You are safe tonight. Stillborn had said in his
own way. I will stand watch while you sleep.

It was a gift, and Raif took it. Making a rough
bed from the blankets, he closed his eyes and slept.

When he awoke the next morning it was still dark.
Mist washing in through the mouth of the cave had coated every
surface with a film of moisture. A single grass lamp burned on the
rock floor by Raif's bed, its damp wick giving off as much smoke as
light. Raif felt stiff but good. Rested and hungry. He could smell
fatty meat charring and stood to investigate. His left ankle took
weight with only a mild spasm of protest, though if anything it
looked worse than it had in three days. The bruising had turned
black and purple and for some reason his big toe had started to
swell. He ignored it. It was a skill he was getting better at.

Stillborn was out on the ledge, hunched around a
tiny little fire, a red blanket pulled tight across his shoulders,
browning a length of cured sausage on a stick. He was shivering and
talking to himself, saying the words, "Bloody, bloody, bloody.
Sod it, sod it, sod it," in a weary voice that might have been
intended to keep him awake. He wasn't aware of Raif standing at the
mouth of the cave.

The sky had cleared and the stars were out over
the clanholds, and Raif realized it was the first time he had seen
stars that could be relied upon in over a month. The nights he'd
spent in the canyonlands had been overcast. Starlight lit the domes
of the Copper Hills and the sea of mist surrounding them. The Lost
Clan was out there, and Dhoone. Quietly, Raif turned and stepped back
into the cave.

This time he made more noise, banging the bronze
bowl that contained the water and rifling through his pack for the
items he meant to give Stillborn.

"You up, lazy-days?" came Stillborn's
grumpy voice. "Come out here and watch the fire while I take a
quick kip before we leave."

Raif understood the language here. Watch the fire
meant simply watch. Crossing to the ledge he greeted Stillborn.

"What's this?" demanded the Maimed Man,
staring suspiciously at the small packs and pouches that were
squashed against Raif's chest.

Raif sat, letting the packages spill forward onto
the rimrock. "Cheese, honey, dates, almonds, butter, dried
apricots, lentils. Not the sheep's curd and the tea herbs, though.
They're for Addie."

"Give him the lentils too," Stillborn
said magnanimously, reaching for the largest pack. "Little
orange buggers make me fart."

They had a good breakfast of sausage dipped in
honey and nuts dipped in melted sheep's butter. The minute he stopped
eating Stillborn fell asleep. His chin dropped against his chest, his
massive shoulders slumped, his mouth fell open, and he began to snore
vigorously and, oddly enough, in tune.

Raif drank water and watched the fire. The mist
was receding and the flames brightened as he poked air between the
sticks. The Rift was silent now. A slight shimmering of the darkness
at eye level told him that it was venting heat. Time passed and after
a while Raif reached inside his tunic and pulled out the pouch
containing the stormglass.

It was beautiful to look at in the starlight.
Light reflected and refracted, twinkled into existence. Moved. Its
rounded sides felt good in his hand, like a talisman, and as he held
it the glass warmed.

I give no promises. Raif mouthed the words he'd
said to Tallal. Disturbed by their hollowness he said them again out
loud.

"I give no promises."

"What? Where?" Stillborn said blearily,
his head snapping up from his chest. A line of drool rolled down his
chin as he looked accusingly at Raif. "A man can't sleep nowhere
nohow in this place." Standing abruptly, he said, "Fuck it.
We'd better get going."

They got their gear together and killed the fire
and the lamp. As they climbed up through the city, air rising from
the Rift cooled the exposed skin on Raif's neck and face. Maimed Men
walked and climbed through the thinning mist, heads hooded against
the damp, torches swinging before them on long poles. Stillborn
greeted some with curt nods. Others he ignored. He was wearing a
tunic sewn from pieced wolverine skins edged with black leather, and
a flat-paneled bearskin kilt. His arms and lower legs were bare,
though they looked as if they'd been rubbed with lard for warmth. He
carried no hunting bow but had brought a single, case-hardened
throwing spear, five feet long and tapered at both ends. He used the
spear as a walking stick, tapping the rimrock as he walked.

Raif was wearing the Orrl cloak and he noticed
that some men did not see him until he was right upon them, so
perfectly did the cloak match the mist. The Sull bow was strung
crosswise against his back and his arrowcase, containing the scant
half-dozen arrows he had left, rode high on his right shoulder. The
borrowed sword swung from his waist. He had not drawn it yet, so
could claim no firsthand knowledge of the blade, but judging from the
ring pommel and iron crossguards, it was probably a basic
cut-and-thruster.

As they made their way east the sky began to
lighten and the smell of grass and willow smoke grew stronger.
Children emerged, rumpled and sleepy-eyed, from lean-tos built
against the cave mouths. Some caves had been closed off by cane
screens or animal hides. Others were open to the night. Custom
demanded that you did not peer into those spaces as you passed them.
Maimed Men expected privacy in their caves.

Addie Gunn was waiting on the easternmost point of
the city, a jagged granite promontory that extended fifty feet over
the Rift. He was alone, cloaked and hooded in plain brown wool and
leaning upon an oak staff. His lips pressed to a thin line when he
saw them and he declared without greeting, "You are late."

Stillborn said, "And a fine morning to you,
Addie Gunn." Addie ignored this and said to Raif, "You're
looking better, lad."

"Looked like hell last night," Stillborn
said, clapping Raif hard on the back. "A night's sleep prettied
him up quite considerably." The cragsman nodded, thoughtful.
"We'd best head off." Stillborn bowed, somewhat creakily,
at the waist "Lead the way." The sun floated beneath the
horizon as they headed north from the rim, turning the sky red and
then pink. Breezes snapped at ground level but there was no real
wind. Raif had never traveled east or north of the Rift and was
interested in the paths Addie chose. The cragsman led them across a
rocky headland strewn with boulders and overgrown with spiny yellow
grasses, juniper and holly. Small, dun-colored birds flew out from
beneath bushes as they passed. Raif spotted hares in molt, ground
squirrels, rats, mice and voles. As always it was difficult for him
to tell if he actually saw the animals, or simply felt their beating
hearts. He'd pass a loose pile of rocks and know that a vole was
hiding within the shadows, quivering.

"Does anyone set traps?" he asked Addie
as they made their way along a brush-choked draw.

Addie shook his head. Now that the sun had risen
he had drawn back his hood, revealing his closely shaved scalp and
big ears. "A few do. Mostly it's not considered worth it. Land's
like dry bone."

Raif wanted to disagree, but didn't. A reluctance
to reveal how different he was to other men stopped him. Instead, he
made a mental note about traps. Hungry men and women would be glad of
squirrel, vole and hare.

The morning wore on. The sun shone with cool
brilliance in a blue cloudless sky. After leading them north for an
hour or so Addie turned east and they were now descending into a
trough-shaped valley carved by some long-retreated glacier. Huge
erratic boulders and heaps of gravel peeked out through the thick
ground cover of willow, fireweed and black sedge. A series of small
green ponds arranged like beads on a thread ran along the center of
the valley floor.

"Goats have gone to high ground for the
kidding," Addie said, poking bushes with his stick as he
searched for prints and scat. "Might see deer if the luck's with
us. Elk'll have gone west. Coons and pines: they'll be here, all
right. Trick is spotting 'em. Bears, now . . ." He shook his
head. "Better chance of cats."

Raif listened to the cragsman's litany, interested
and alert. They were at the head of the valley on a steep downslope
where he could see for leagues due east. The oily smell of sedge
filled his nostrils and icy breezes lifted his hair from his scalp.
Creatures were alive down there, moving beneath the willow, and he,
Raif Sevrance, would hunt them. Life was simple and clear, and once
Addie Gunn had finished speaking, Raif braced his bow and set off
alone for the valley floor.

Glancing down at the Orrl cloak he saw the glazed
leather now reflected the gray-green colors of the sedge. Briefly he
wondered if the cloak also masked his man-scent, for he had noticed
that as long as he moved quietly he was nearly impossible to detect.
His first kill was a three-foot garter snake just emerging from her
winter sleep. She was sliding between two ground junipers when he
speared her with his new sword. Deciding to leave her whole with the
gut intact, he slipped the snake between the waxed folds of his
makeshift gamepouch. As he wiped his swordblade clean with a fist of
fireweed, he was already scanning his next kill.

A raccoon, her belly swollen with soon-to-be-born
kits, had denned in a shallow depression beneath a loose pile of
rocks. Raif sent an arrow straight into her heart. It beat and then
stopped. The unborn kits continued living for a while and then, one
by one, their tiny, perfectly formed hearts ceased pumping. Raif
sawed through the arrowshaft, unwilling to pull it and risk the head
coming loose. Left inside it would hold the carcass intact. After
that he decided to form a game pile, and chose an exposed spot on top
of one of the boulders. That way if vultures or other opportunists
spied the carrion, either Addie or Stillborn could cover it. Might
even bag a fat bird for the pot.

Raif pushed off again, searching. It wasn't a good
time of day for deer but he had a feeling that the water and the lush
growth surrounding it might bring them out, so he made his way deeper
into the valley. An hour passed, and then another. The sun moved
overhead and flies began buzzing around the gamepouch. When Raif
became aware of a large heart close by, watchful and beating with
strong, easy strokes, he thought at first it was a brown bear. Then
knowledge came to him and he was surprised he could have imagined it
was anything other than a cat. Raif moved at the same time the cat
did, bringing the bow to vertical as he drew back the string. The cat
sprang away, leaping into the deep cover of willows and rocks. It
was a full-grown male, heavy as two grown men with a pale silver coat
free of markings. Raif loosed his first arrow and watched as it sped
wide. He could sense the creature's heart but in the time it took for
the arrow to leave the riser and cross the distance between Raif and
the cat, the cat was already gone. His second arrow grazed the
snagcat's rump. And then, just as Raif brought a third arrow to the
plate, something sped past his face. He heard a whoosh followed by a
thud of impact and knew instantly that the snag cat had faltered.
Keeping his hands firm on bow and bowstring, he aimed the arrow and
loosed it.

The big cat stopped. Dead. Raif's heart pounded
and a familiar liquid pain rolled across his left shoulder—the
first time he'd felt it in days.

"Is he down?" came Stillborn's call. The
Maimed Man was standing high above Raif on a bank of stratified
rock. Until the moment he had thrown the spear, Raif had been unaware
of his presence. Raif was surprised by his own failings. Without
Stillborn the cat would have got away. And he should have known
Stillborn was there.

Stillborn jumped down onto the valley floor and
walked toward the cat. The distance he had thrown the spear was
impressive, a length no shorter than two hundred feet. "Saw you
fire off a couple of arrows," he said. "Looked like you
needed some help."

Raif nodded, attempting to conceal the confusion
and irritation he felt.

Stillborn saw it anyway. "Best go look for
your arrows, lad."

He did just that, leaving Stillborn to the kill.
Two arrows had gone astray, and after searching for a quarter-hour in
the brush Raif realized he wasn't going to find them. That had never
really been the point.

Calmer, he returned to Stillborn and the cat. The
Maimed Man had opened up the carcass, split the ribs and was in the
process of removing the organ tree. The bloody, glistening flesh was
steaming.

"Took your arrow out of the heart," he
said in greeting as he cut through greenish back fat. "It's over
there, on the rock."

Raif nodded, though Stillborn was not looking at
him. "The liver's yours."

Slowing his knife, Stillborn said, "I'm glad
to hear it. Come here and help me with the gut."

Together they cleaned and drained the carcass. The
liver, the prize awarded to the hunter who brought down the kill, sat
darkly on a bed of plucked fire weed, seeping blood. The sun,
beginning its slow descent into the west, gave off something that
felt like warmth. Addie Gunn reached them just as they decided to
trophy-cut the snagcat's hide. The cragsman was dragging a yearling
kid by its hind leg. He seemed happy enough to set his own butchering
duties aside to advise on the best cuts to preserve the tail and
legs.