A Sword From Red Ice (6 page)

If there's no water we're damned.

It was the first clear thought he had until
nightfall. Bear began wheezing during the climb across the gravel
banks, a sharp little piping noise that sounded as if it were coming
from a broken flute. And she shied for the first time. When they
reached a deep chute filled with younger, sharper scree she refused
to cross it, digging in her back hooves and weakly tossing her head.
Raif went on ahead awhile, but she wouldn't follow, even when he
called her, and he was forced to go back. Light was beginning to
fail, and more than anything else he did not want to lose sight of
her. He feared the landscape might shift while he wasn't looking and
the Want would cancel her out.

It was becoming hard to think. There should have
been a way around the chute—he even saw it once, laid out like
a treasure map before him—but he couldn't keep the facts in his
head. Bear didn't want to walk through the jagged scree. The chute
was narrow. Maybe they could double back . . .

He lost time. Standing on the hillside, thoughts
stalled, he was aware only of the intense cold. Ice twinkled in his
eyelashes when he blinked. Something—he couldn't say
what—snapped him back. For an instant he wasn't glad;
everything took too much effort here. It was easier to drift. Yet
when he saw Bear he felt shamed. The little pony was standing where
he had left her, shaking and making that little piping noise when she
inhaled.

"Come on, girl" he coaxed, trudging
toward her through shin-high gravel. "Not far now. We'll go down
a bit and then around." He didn't know if they could make it
that way, but it hardly seemed to matter anymore. Doing was better
than thinking in this place.

Night fell in layers. The sun hung on the farthest
edge of the horizon and smoldered. A dusk of long shadows made it
difficult to see the way forward. Overhead the first of the big
northern stars ignited in a sky turning deep-sea blue. Raif had taken
to plowing the breath ice from his nose and chin and shoveling it
into his mouth. The moisture it rendered wasn't sufficient to be
called liquid, but the sensation of fizzy coolness on his tongue was
deeply pleasing. When he tried, to perform the same service for Bear,
she shied away from him. Blood was oozing from a cut on her back
heel, and she'd started to carry her head and tail low. She wouldn't
go much farther, he realized.

He owed her a decent end. As he peered through the
darkness toward the turn of the hill his spirits sank. They'd barely
made any progress since sunset, simply retraced their steps from the
chute. Glancing from his sword to Bear, he made a decision. One hour.
No more.

He was gentle with her as they took their final
climb.

Starlight lit the hillside, making the rocks glow
blue. Raif thought about how he'd first met Bear—she'd been a
replacement for the horse he'd lost in canyon country west of the
Rift—and how she had carried him to the Fortress of Grey Ice.
She had kept him sane, he knew that now. After the raid on the silver
mine at Black Hole he was nearly lost. Bitty's death had been too
much to bear.

Raif girded himself for the memories. He would not
fight them off or deny them: Bitty Shank, son of Orwin and sworn
clansman of Blackhail, deserved better than that. He had not deserved
to die at the hands of a fellow clansman.

Oathbreaker, Raif named himself, his lips moving.
That morning on the greatcourt he had sworn to protect his clan . . .
and he had not protected them.

He had killed them.

Raif sucked in air, welcoming the cold into
cavities close to his heart. He was damned. And how should a damned
man live his life?

A crunching sounding to his left brought him back.
Swinging around, he saw that Bear had stumbled to her knees. Oh gods.
He scrambled over to her, not caring where he placed his feet.
Nightfall had sharpened the frost and walking through the gravel was
like wading through sea ice. Bear was shivering intensely. Her eyes
tracked him as he approached, and everything he saw in them told him
he could not wait any longer.

"Little Bear," he said softy. "My
best girl."

She was cool to the touch. Even now, she pushed
her head toward his hand as he stroked her cheek. Kneeling, he moved
his body alongside her, wanting to give her his heat. Her heart was
beating out of time; he could feel it against his chest. Gently, he
rubbed the ice from her nose. She was calm now; they both were.

"My best little Bear."

Raif kissed her eyes closed and drew his sword. No
one in the Known World could deliver a death blow with such accuracy
and force, and for the first time in his eighteen-year life Raif
Sevrance was grateful for that fact.

It was a mercy for both of them.

Curling himself around her cooling body, he lay
and rested for a while in the Want.

The Sundering

Raina Blackhail ordered the halved pig's carcass
to be hauled from the dairy shed to the wetroom. Two days it had lain
there, exposed to the warm and fragrant air, and the flies must have
done their job by now. Besides, the smell was making her sick.

Jebb Onnacre, one of the stablehands and a Shank
by marriage, was quick to nod. "Aye, lady. Couple of days in the
wetroom and you'll have some fine maggots to spare."

Raina showed a brief smile. It was the best she
could manage this cold midmorning. She liked Jebb, he was a good man
and he bore his injuries stoically, but the night the Hailstone
exploded, destroying the guidehouse, stable block, and east wall of
the roundhouse, it seemed the weight of those structures had fallen
upon her shoulders. And she had been bearing it now for a week.

"I'll rig up a platform. Give it a little air
along with the damp." Jebb had lifted the carcass onto a sheet
of oiled tarp in preparation for dragging it through the hay. Raina
could tell from his hopeful expression that he wanted to please her,
that by offering to do more than was necessary he was showing his
support.

She was grateful for that. It gave her what she
needed for a genuine smile. "Thank you, Jebb. I'd forgotten the
maggots need good ventilation to grow."

Jebb cinched the end of the tarp in his wrist.
"Aye, lady. Makes you wonder what else we've forgotten as a
clan." With that, he jerked the carcass into motion and began
dragging it toward the door.

Raina watched him go. His words had given her a
little chill and she pulled her mohair shawl snug across her
shoulders. The air in the shed was dusty with hay and the mites that
fed on it made her throat itch. Gloomy gray light flooded the dimness
as Jebb flung back the doors.

The stablehand's head was still wrapped in
bandages. Jebb had been sleeping on a box pallet in one of the horse
stalls when the Sundering happened, and had ended up with a chunk of
granite embedded in his skull. He'd bled for two whole days. Only the
gods knew why he wasn't dead. Laida Moon, the clan healer, had
pronounced it to be a miracle of "the thick Onnacre head."
Jebb had embraced this diagnosis with such enthusiasm that he'd
started referring to himself as "Old Thickey."

Wearing one's injuries with pride had become a way
of life in the Hailhouse. Gat Murdock had lost an arm. Lansa Tanner
was still abed with injuries too numerous to mention; it was likely
she would lose an eye. Quiet, big-boned Hatty Hare had suffered burns
on the right side of her face and shoulders. Duggen Harris, the
little hay boy, had been burned even worse. Noddie Drook, whom
everyone called the Noddler, had been slammed so hard against the
wall of the Dry Run that he'd smashed six ribs and punctured a lung.
And so the list went on: Stanner Hawk, Jamie Perch, Arlan Perch . . .
Raina shook her head gently. There were too many injured to name.

The dead, though, they had to be named. She could
not call herself chief's wife if she did not catalogue the dead.

Bessie Flapp. Gone. The shock of the explosion had
stopped her heart. The new luntman, Mornie Dabb, had been lighting
torches in the tunnelway. His body was found three days later, blown
all the way to the kaleyard. Mog Willey, Effie's childhood friend.
He'd been on his way to the guidehouse to deliver Inigar's morning
milk. His body was found in two pieces. Joshua Honeycut and Wilbur
Peamouth, two stablehands like Jebb, only they were up and about that
morning, preparing breakfast and scouring the workbenches for Jon
Crickle, the stablemaster. Also dead. Craw Bannering's head had been
severed. Vernon Murdock, brother to Gat, hung on for four days before
succumbing to his injuries. And it was a mercy the little milkmaid,
Elsa Doe, had just lived out the day.

Inigar's body had not been found, and Raina had an
instinct that even when work crews cleared the rubble heap that had
once been the guidehouse it would still be missing. Oh, he had died
along with the Hailstone, she did not doubt it. But it would be just
like Inigar to confound people in death. He had never been an easy
man to get along with, and he was not going to be an easy corpse to
find.

Stop it, Raina chided herself. What am I doing,
making light of the dead? Shamed, she continued to name the ones
lost. It was a long list: thirty-nine clansmen and women as of this
morning. Not counting the tied clansmen, those who farmed and worked
their trades in the Hailhold but did not live in the roundhouse
year-round and had not spoken oaths to defend it. Many of the tied
clansmen who had died had been camped against the great fold's
eastern wall. Part of the floor above had collapsed upon them. Poor
souls. They had come to the roundhouse seeking protection during the
war.

And then there were the Scarpemen. Raina's mouth
tightened as she made her way toward the stable door. She was not
going to count those. They had no business being here, had sworn
oaths to a foreign clan. What was Mace thinking, to invite close to a
thousand warriors and their families to stay indefinitely in the
Hailhouse? True enough, Scarpe's own roundhouse had been destroyed by
fire, but let them build a new one—and stay within the
Scarpehold while they did it.

Scarpe losses during the Sundering had been high.
Many had taken to camping in the old grain store that lay hard
against the eastern wall. The bell-shaped structure had been letting
in rainwater for years, and the mortar was black and rotted. When the
guidestone exploded, the walls and ceiling had caved in. Children had
died; and perhaps if she looked deep enough inside herself she could
find some sympathy for them.

But today she wasn't going to try. Nodding her
farewell to the new stablemaster, Cyril Blunt, she left the old dairy
shed that was being used as a temporary stable. The cold of outside
shocked her. Strange unseasonable winds were blowing stormclouds
west. A wet snow had begun to fall and already the pines around the
greatcourt were dusted white. People had begun to whisper that when
the guidestone had exploded it had blasted away spring along with the
roundhouse's eastern wall. Normally Raina had no patience with such
superstitious nonsense. But it had been unseasonably cold this past
week, and if the gods could split a guidestone into a million
separate pieces then they could surely rob a clanhold of its spring.

Raina Blackhail, take a hold of yourself. There
are already enough doomsayers in this roundhouse. We don't need one
more.

Breaking into a run, she followed Jebb's draglines
toward the hole in the eastern wall. The sound of work crews
hammering and sawing assaulted her ears. Nothing was more frightening
to a clansman than a breach in his roundhouse wall and the rebuilding
went on day and night. After sunset, huge oil-burning torches were
lit and the night crews took over. The night crews wore pot helms
with candles fixed above their visors with blobs of wax. It was a
strange thing to see. Strange and good. Every able-bodied Hailsman
and Hailwife in the roundhouse—either with an oath or
without—worked toward the reconstruction in some way. Longhead,
who for as long as Raina could remember had been head keep of the
Hailhold, had come into his own. The man was a wonder. Even with an
inch of flesh missing from his left leg.

He came toward her now, hobbling with the aid of a
bent stick. Never a man to waste words on greeting he got straight to
the point. "Raina, I need to know when I can start clearing the
guidehouse. We can't seal the wall till it's done."

Raina took a breath to steady herself, then
another to give herself more time. Dagro, her first husband, had
taught her many things. Think before you speak was one of them. Seven
days had passed since the Sundering. Seven days where the remains of
the guidehouse had been left untouched. Raina could view the rubble
from where she stood: a two-story heap of dust and jagged rock
punctured by hunks of broken wall. Even though she'd seen it over a
dozen times before, she still had to stop herself from reaching
toward her measure of powdered guidestone for comfort. The Hailstone
was dead.

As she looked on, the wind picked up, sending snow
skirling and blowing plumes of dark gray powder from the rubble. Once
men had treasured that powder; carried it into battle, borne it
across continents, dipped it beneath their tongues as they spoke
oaths, rubbed it on the bellies of their newborns, and sprinkled it
over the closed eyes of their dead. It had been used as sparingly as
gold. Now it was blowing in the wind.

Yet Longhead was right. Something had to be done
about it. But what? And who was left to decide?

Raina studied Longhead's face carefully. He was a
man who had grown into his name, developing in his later years a high
forehead and a long chin. Never married and seldom courted, he spent
most of his time working alone and in silence. Raina wasn't even sure
if Longhead was his first name or last, or some nickname he'd picked
up along the way. She wasn't sure about much to do with the head
keep, she realized. Including where his allegiances lay.