A Sword From Red Ice (50 page)

Rather than say anything against Stillborn Raif
did not speak, but the truth lay in the shadows between them.
"Fifteen years is a long time to spend complaining."

Raif moved his legs apart to spread his weight.
Whilst Traggis Mole had been speaking he had the sense that he was
standing in a fixed position above the darkness. All he could see
below him was night sky. Once when he and Drey had been at the swim
hole in the Wedge, Drey had wedged a board underneath a rock to use
as a dive platform. Somehow it was different from diving off
boulders; there was a bounce and you were suspended a couple of feet
over the water. You didn't have to step out, just down. That's what
Raif felt now, as if the jump would be easier here. A move forward
was the same thing as a move down.

Everything Traggis Mole said had the hard ring of
truth about it, even the stuff about the gold. Raif did not care
about the gold, nor did it change his opinion of Stillborn. The
Maimed Man had warned him early on that this was not the clanholds
and he was no longer clan. Raif frowned. If that had been an attempt
by the Robber Chief to switch Raif's allegiance it had failed. What
had not failed were the other things Traggis Mole had said. You must
grow accustomed to the dark. Those words described his life.

Walking the short distance to the edge of the
cliff, Raif looked down at the city, forced himself to see it. A
bonfire had been lit on the main ledge and Maimed Men were gathered
in numbers, probably roasting the meat Addie and Stillborn had
brought them. No other fires burned brightly. The glows of dozens of
grass and willow fires flickered weakly, a single stick or blade of
grass away from extinction. Traggis Mole had once called this place a
termites' nest, and that's how it looked to Raif as the dark forms of
men and women scuttled below him. He did not care about these people,
so why had he told Stillborn and Addie Gunn that he would make
himself their chief?

In the light of day it was easy to say things and
have them sound like sense. The night was different, full of dark
spaces were doubts could grow. Words could get spun back on you.
Traggis Mole had found the flaws in Raif's plan and hurled them back
like darts. Raif did not want to spend the rest of his days on the
edge of this abyss, battling whatever came out.

As if reading his mind, Traggis Mole said, "This
flaw in the earth is mine. I've ruled it for seventeen years and I've
found it gets no lovelier over time." Somehow the Robber Chief
was now beside Raif on the edge, his finely shaped mouth pouring cold
words in his ear. "Men whine amongst themselves, throwing blame.
What's the Mole doing for us? Why haven't we got more food? Why
doesn't the Mole act and change things? They forget where they are.
They grow lazy, burn grass instead of wood and slaughter their ponies
for meat. You tell them to go hunting and raiding and they look at
you as if you're cursing in a foreign tongue. This is the Rift.
People here do not work toward the well-being of their fellow men. To
rule here is to be king of a hole. Once you fall in there is no
digging yourself out. Are you prepared for that, Twelve Kill,
prepared to feed these ungrateful wretches, break up their knife
fights, dispose of their dead? And all the while you have to stand
here and watch, one eye on the Rift and the wralls that walk there,
and the other eye on your back, marking the men who would slit your
throat?"

The Robber Chief's gloved hand closed like a vise
around Raif's arm. "I will not let you slit my throat."

Raif swallowed. He could smell the Robber Chief, a
smell of sweat and minerals and something else just short of sweet.
The man's fingers were like nails being driven into his flesh. Below,
the city and the Rift seemed to be tipping toward them. Raif was
acutely aware of the slope of the rock. If you were to set a ball by
the firepit it would roll off.

"Tell me you will not slit my throat,"
demanded the Robber Chief. The force of his grip made both of them
shake.

Raif's arm was beginning to numb. Something about
the Robber Chief's smell was familiar and vaguely disturbing, but his
mind could not grasp what it was. For some reason he kept thinking
about Drey's dive board. Moving forward was the same as moving down.

"I will not slit your throat," he cried
out.

Instantly the same force that held him, yanked him
back and he fell backward onto the rock, landing on his butt. He sat
there a moment, planting his palms on the ground and breathing hard.
Sharp tingles rose up his arm toward the wound made by the Shatan
Maer, and suddenly Raif knew what the Robber Chief smelled of.

He wished he had recognized it sooner for it might
have prevented him from taking a step forward.

And down.

I will not slit your throat. The words were a lie;
he had spoken them knowing he would defy them. Oh, he would have been
sure not to use a knife and take it to the Robber Chief's throat, but
in all other ways the statement was false. Raif would have, and might
still, kill him.

Break an oath, kill a clansman, lie to a man's
face: the list of his sins had just grown longer.

Raising his chin, Raif gazed at the stars.
Perhaps, hundreds of leagues to the southwest at Blackhail, Drey and
Effie were doing the same. He liked to think of them safe. It gave
him something, not strength exactly, more like a solid surface to
rest upon . . . as he fell.

Raif glanced over his shoulder toward the Robber
Chief, who had come to rest by the fire. A gloved hand, angling out
from his greatcloak and grasping the edge of the firewall, told
everything. Raif wondered how he had not seen it sooner. He, of all
people, should have known.

"So you will not slit my throat,"
Traggis Mole repeated, a soft bitterness edging his voice. "I
will make myself grateful for that."

Rising to his feet, Raif said, "The Rift
Brothers should be taught how to set traps. There's small game to the
east of here. Rabbits, ground squirrels, coons. Lean meat, but a man
could do worse."

A strange light glittered in Traggis Mole's black
eyes. "Do it," he said.

That cost him, Raif thought, unsure whether or not
he had been right to bring it up. Traggis Mole's pride ran deep.

"Linden Moodie leads a sortie into the
clanholds at dawn tomorrow. You will not be expected to go along."

Raif and the Robber Chief regarded each other
carefully, searching for the truth behind one another's statements.
Just once Traggis Mole pulled his wooden nose free of his face and
took a clear breath.

"Why here?" Raif asked as the wind
picked up, sending the flames in the firepit shivering.

The robber chief did not shrug or hesitate as
other men might. He said, "I fought the pits in Trance Vor; if
any life could prepare a man for this it would be that one."

Pit fighting. Raif had thought it was a legend.
Two men flung into a pit and not allowed out until one of them was
dead.

"The walls were always eleven feet high, do
you know why?"

Raif shook his head.

"Any higher and the gas lamps wouldn't be
able to throw enough light into the pit and the crowd would be unable
to see. Any shorter and a man could jump up and pull his way out."
Traggis Mole watched Raif shiver. "The winner always had to wait
for the rope to be lowered. One day I decided I no longer wanted to
wait."

It was getting colder, Raif realized, yet the Mole
did not appear to feel it. He was moving again, this time toward the
north edge of the stack where a ridge of rock stretched down and back
to join the cliff wall. "My story is no different than a dozen
other men and women will tell you here. We're all lost, desperate.
Chased. My mistake was in killing the man who lowered the rope to me
that final time. He didn't deserve it, but I can't say that worried
me much. He turned out to have the sort of brother that would not let
the death rest. His name was Scurvy Pine and he called himself the
King of Thieves. Took my nose from me and would have taken more if I
hadn't escaped him. Next day he set a thieves' bounty on my head. A
thousand pieces of gold, can you imagine it? Enough money to build a
marble pool and drown yourself in riches. Every stableboy,
man-at-arms, shopkeeper and villain in the city wanted to find me
and chop off my head. And it didn't stop at Trance Vor. Word of
Scurvy Pine's bounty spread west to Morning Star, Hound's Mire, Spire
Vanis and Ille Glaive. Soon there was nowhere I could rest easy at
night. I took to the roads and then the woods, spent a year
scratching out a living at a lumber camp deep in the Trenchlands, and
then, by some miracle of misfortune, I ended up in the Rift."

Traggis Mole's hand came up as he lightly touched
his ribs through the fabric of his cloak. "And here is where I
stay."

He knows, Raif realized, hearing the bleakness in
his voice.

Traggis Mole met gazes with Raif, breathed hard
through his wooden nose and then looked away.

"Everyone who saw you shoot against Tanjo Ten
Arrow at the test of arrows saw what you could do with a bow. The
outlander Thomas Argola reckons you can do more. He came to me the
day after the wrall passed through the city, and you know what he
said?"

Raif could imagine, but he shook his head. "He
said if I were you, Mole Chief, I'd pray for Twelve Kill's return."

The Mole moved and in an instant was directly in
front of Raif's face, his gloved hand grasping the collar of the Orrl
cloak. "What did he mean by that?"

Updrafts were rising, and the first hollow notes
of Rift Music sounded. Raif smelled cat meat cooking nine stories
below him. "You must have asked him."

For a moment Raif thought Traggis Mole would pull
out one of his famous longknives and stab him in the throat. Yet he
didn't. With a springing motion of his hand he released Raif's cloak.
"I am asking you."

The calm in his voice sounded dangerous to Raif.
"I can't tell you what the outlander knows. I've only spoken to
him a handful of times and what he said made no sense. I can tell you
that I have seen and fought those beings you call wralls. I have
killed some. I can do it again."

Here was the knowledge he had been waiting for,
the one thing that this meeting was about. Raif saw it now, saw the
world of fear living behind the Mole Chief's black eyes. Saw it and
knew it wasn't for himself. We are alike, Raif realized with a small
start. Both watching.

Both wounded.

Traggis Mole said, "Will you defend your Rift
Brothers?"

The words were formal, and to Raif they sounded
like an oath. He thought before he answered. He did not want to speak
a second lie. Some wary part of his brain checked for clauses. The
words sounded like a simple request; they did not appear to conceal a
trap. Only yesterday he had spoken a promise to Stillborn and Addie
Gunn. I will become Lord of the Rift. Surely the two were one and the
same?

Raif glanced at the Robber Chief, Traggis Mole.
Why did he not ask for anything for himself?

The answer was beneath his cloak. Perhaps not even
realizing he did so, Traggis Mole stood bent at the waist.

"I will defend the Rift Brothers." Raif
tried, but could not keep the ring of oathspeaking from his voice,
and the words bounced off the cliffwall and echoed across the Rift to
the clanholds.

Oathbreaker, that was his Blackhail name.

But the Robber Chief did not know it.

Traggis Mole nodded once, and then called to some
unseen watcher down below, directing him to lower the drawbridge.

He and Raif stood feet apart, watching each other
as men climbed stairs and loosed ropes.

"Go," the Robber Chief commanded once
the narrow wooden drawbridge was seated upon the lip of the stack.

The instant before Raif turned he saw a single
curl of black smoke rising through the gap in Traggis Mole's
horsehide cloak.

The wrall's sword had sunk deep into the meat
between his ribs, and now he was being eaten alive.

Raif felt the wound in his shoulder twitch in
sympathy as he crossed the drawbridge in the dark.

The Menhir Fire

Raina soaked in the copper bath and let her
thoughts drift with the steam. It was good to be weightless. Her
breasts floated on the surface, hot and pink, as her hand idly passed
between her legs. Later her presence would be needed at the Hallowing
of the guidestone, but for now she could simply float.

Jebb Onnacre had brought the tub to her chamber
and Anwyn had drawn a bath with rosemary and precious ambergris. The
scent was sweet and peppery, like baked fruit. Oil swirled on the
water, trembling as Raina breathed. Dagro had liked to watch her
bathe, and she had learned over time to enjoy being watched. Boldly
she would raise her legs from the water and ask if he found her
clean.

Pushing her toes against the base of the tub,
Raina rose to standing. There was too much confusion down that path.
Mace Blackhail had robbed that pleasure from her, the remembering of
her first husband's lovemaking. She could glimpse it but if she
looked too long, newer images were overlaid over the old ones. Son
instead of father. Dead leaves between her legs. Stepping out of the
bath, Raina twisted her wet hair into a knot and wrung it dry. She
had never returned to the Oldwood. When she was chief she was going
to have it chopped down.

Anwyn had laid out all manner of pretty things for
Raina to dally with. Shell combs, silk ribbons, perfumed unctions, a
silver mirror, rouge—how in the name of Ione had she come by
that? Toweling herself dry with a yellow shammy Raina frowned in mild
puzzlement. There was a message here, in all these maiden's gewgaws
and paints, and if she thought about it long enough it wasn't
flattering. Yes, Anwyn meant to treat her. The clan matron was one of
the very few people in this roundhouse who knew what Raina felt about
being forced to participate in tonight's events. Yet a hot bath alone
would have sufficed as a treat. This armory of prettiness laid out on
a crisply pressed sheet was something more.