A Sword From Red Ice (70 page)

To Raif it was a price worth paying. He had a
strong preference for not walking on land claimed by clan.

Addie wasn't much for conversation so they climbed
in silence. Sometimes the cragsman would whistle a few notes of one
of the old lambing songs, and other times he would pluck dried grass
heads from the snow and chew on them. He kept an even, unhurried
pace, and did not look around to check on Raif. Every so often he
would halt to check the depth of a snowdrift with his stick.

Even though the light was failing they made good
progress, and they topped the tiered and fractured cliff face just as
the mist began to rise. Raif shivered as the sweat beneath his
sealskins cooled against his skin. For the last quarter they had been
moving northeast to the Rift and when they paused at the cliff top he
turned around and saw that the crack in the earth had filled with
clouds.

"Happens quick," Addie said, fallowing
his gaze. "We won't be able to continue much longer."

Raif took the lead from him. He did not want to
stop. While his mind was occupied with walking he did not wish to
think about the look in Traggis Mole's eyes as he died.

Swear it.

As the hour wore on the shadows disappeared,
driven away by the mist. Islands of cloud rose from the Rift and
drifted slowly in circles. The rocks underfoot slickened and the
surface of the snow mounds turned to grease ice. Raif had to bend his
head to see his feet, and after a while he could not see them at all.
Sunset had taken place some time back, but the light remained
strangely, quiveringly white. Behind him he could hear the steady pad
of Addie's thinly soled boots. The cragsman was not whistling
anymore.

"Lad." Addie's voice pierced the mist
like an arrow. "I'm done here."

The words carried an authority that Raif had not
expected. They did not mean I. They meant We. Raif put up no
argument, and tracked Addie's footfalls through the mist. The
cragsman had in mind somewhere he meant to go.

He and Stillborn had probably hunted these cliffs,
Raif realized, stalking mule deer and wild goats. Addie slipped
between a crack in the rock and through a pocket in the cliff wall.
It was not a cave, for the clouds floated freely overhead, but it
offered some protection against the mist. Addie set about making a
camp. It was darker here than out in the open, but still not as dark
as it should have been. Raif wondered if the moon had risen.

He made a circuit of the small clearing, hiking up
slabs of granite and leaping between boulders. When he came across a
dried-up sage bush wedged into a depression in the rock, he hauled it
up for kindling. It had surprisingly tenacious roots.

Traveling light meant there were no tents, only
sleep mats and blankets. Each man carried his own water and supplies
and although they would not stray from the path to hunt they would
keep an eye lively for game. Addie kept his supplies strapped to his
torso in a series of tanned leather pouches that helped distribute
the weight. This meant he took some unpacking, and Raif found himself
smiling as he watched the cragsman struggle with an underarm pack.

Raif did not offer to help, but he did set about
making a fire. One thing he had learned from his short time raiding
and hunting with Addie was that the cragsman was fanatical about his
tea. The sage flared quickly and smelled like winter festivals and
stuffed game birds. Raif placed a smooth rock into the center of the
flames and went in search of willow. He had to squeeze through the
gap in the cliff to find it, and by the time he had returned Addie
had already boiled water for the tea.

"When you're short on fuel it's always best
to use water from the canteen instead of snowmelt," he said,
noting Raif's surprise. "If it's been wedged in your armpit all
day it'll be nice and warm."

Raif had no reply for that, and fed his willow
sticks to the fire.

"Tea?" Addie asked when the herbs had
steeped.

Raif surprised himself by saying, "Yes."

Huddling close to the flames they drank their tea
from tin bowls. Addie had laid strips of smoked meat upon the stone
to warm and now dropped two wrinkly apples in the pot containing the
dregs of the tea. It was good to sit there and draw in the smells and
heat from the fire, good also to be physically exhausted.

And away from the hell of the Rift.

"I smoke it with the fat on," Addie said
after a while. "It doesna keep as long but it's juicier."

Raif agreed. He'd been on many longhunts in his
time and knew the quiet rhythms of camp talk. After they'd eaten the
meat, he asked, "Is there a moon up there?"

Addie glanced up at the banks of mist. "Aye."

Stewed in the tea, the apples had plumped up and
had to be cooled before eating. Raif mashed his in his bowl with a
spoon. It tasted [garbled] and honey-sweet. Earlier he had intended
to ask the cragsman some questions, but now he decided to hold his
peace. From where he sat he could neither see nor perceive the Rift,
and it seemed no small blessing to spend a night free from the
burdens he carried and the oaths he had spoken. When Addie stood and
said, "I'm off to sleep," it sounded like a good idea. Not
bothering to find a flat stretch of rock to lie upon, Raif tugged the
blankets from his bedroll and made his bed near the fire.

He slept lightly. On the way back from gathering
willow he had jammed some branches into the gap in the rock, and his
ears listened for the sounds of rustling. None came. Addie snored.
The mist began to fail, and the moon shone through gaps in the haze
before setting. Nagging pain in Raif's shoulder made it difficult to
sleep on his back, and he rolled onto his side. Sound, dreamless
sleep followed.

When he awoke at dawn Addie was already up. The
cragsman had two strengths of tea; the morning variety was darker and
thicker. Today it tasted of apples. "Boiled it down from last
night," Addie said, frowning into the pot. "Has its good
and bad points."

Raif took a cup and slipped through the crack and
out onto the cliff. The rising sun shone silver through the filmy
remains of the mist. Ahead the clanholds were washed in gray light,
their hills and valleys and forests rendered in shades of gray. A
hundred feet below, a pair of swallows were in flight. Raif drank his
tea. Thinking of it as medicine helped. After he stretched out his
shoulder and relieved himself he returned to the camp.

Addie had killed the fire and packed. He was
sitting on a saddle of rock, working a lump of goat fat into the
belly of his bow. Thickly carved from a single plank of yew, the
cragsman's weapon fell a good foot short of a true longbow. "Are
you set?" he asked, folding the remains of the fat into a small
sheet of waxed hide.

Raif gathered his blankets and waterskin. "Yes."

They ate their breakfast as they made their way
east. Addie had stuffed strips of smoked meat with goat cheese and
they held them in their fists like rolls. The cragsmen took the lead,
setting the same unhurried pace as the night before. Raif was
frustrated at first but after a while he came to understand that
Addie was pacing the journey so they would need fewer rests. About an
hour after they broke camp they were swooped by a pair of birds,
little dun-colored creatures that dive-bombed their heads. Addie
declared, "Eggs," and waved Raif ahead while he searched
the base of the cliff wall for nests.

Raif struck a path that led him closer to the edge
of the Rift. The split in the earth was perhaps four hundred feet
across here, nearly half the distance it was in the city. If he
looked straight down, he could see tiers of rock like giant steps
below him. Rotting snow was sending needle-thin waterfalls trickling
into the abyss. Watching them Raif wondered how deep the Rift really
was. What happened to that water? "Look at these beauties,"
Addie said, coming to join him on the edge. He was carrying a nest
woven from willow and pine needles. It was not much bigger than his
fist. Five speckled brown eggs lay in the center. "Take one."

Raif tilted his head up and cracked the egg into
his mouth. It was creamy and thick, newly laid. When he was done he
threw the shell into the abyss. "How deep is it, Addie?" he
asked.

The Cragsman had taken one of the eggs himself,
and was now packing the remaining three in his chest pouch, carefully
spacing them between lumps of cheese. "I canna say, lad. In its
own way it's a mystery as big as the Great Want." He glanced at
Raif. "At least a few of the souls who enter the Want come
back."

"No man's ever tried to climb down and see?"

Addie snorted. "Show me a rope long enough to
lower a man into hell. You fall. And keep falling. Simple as that."

Raif thought of Traggis Mole's body and shivered.
Today at noon the Maimed Men would lower it into the Rift. Stillborn
would be the one who touched the flame to the rope. The Robber
Chief's body would rock, suspended above the abyss, until the flames
burned through the rope fibers and it plummeted into the depths.

I will not slit your throat, Raif had told him.
Instead he had put a blade through his heart.

Raif glanced down at his sealskin scabbard, where
he now kept Traggis Mole's two-foot longknife. Stillborn had
attempted to lend him another sword—a pretty hand-and-a-halfer
with a double guard—but Raif had declined. The Forsworn blade
had failed on him, and now he would not trust another sword.

Until . . .

Raif set the thought aside. The Mole's knife was
wickedly double-edged and made from dense Vorish steel. It would do.

"Snow's coming again," Addie declared,
looking east. "I can smell it." He fell silent, and Raif
imagined him worrying about the lambs that would be born in the
snowfall. "Best get off," he said after a while.

"Addie." Raif stopped the cragsman from
returning to the trail.

Nodding toward the Rift, he asked, "How long
before it closes?"

The cragsman looked at him with some surprise
showing in his gray eyes. "It never closes, not wholly. North of
Bludd it narrows so that men can cross it, but it's always there, a
black crack running through the forests between here and the Night
Sea."

Raif reached for his lore. Holding the hard piece
of raven in his fist. He continued east with Addie Gunn.

A Lock of Hair

"Cut me a lock of your hair," Lan
Fallstar said to her. "I would keep it. For luck."

Ash knelt by the lake, cupped its cold and green
water in her palms, and splashed it against her face. The shock made
her shiver and she scrubbed her cheeks, nose and forehead to warm
them up. Briefly, she considered stripping off her clothes and
tumbling into the water. She recalled that every winter in Mask
Fortress a handful of aging grangelords would break through the ice
in the Fountain of the Bastard Lords and frolic—there was no
other word for it—in the freezing water. She and Katia had
watched them one year, giggling uncontrollably at their flabby, yet
somehow slack, naked bodies. Katia had called them "insane old
coots" and Ash had agreed, thinking it a fine assessment. Now
she thought she understood the impulse. There was a kind of wild
freedom to be had in being naked in defiance of winter. And it would
certainly get some kind of reaction from the Far Rider.

"Your hair," he said again to her, his
voice light but insistent. "If you will permit, I will cut it
for you."

Ash turned to face him. The bodices of her dress
and the hair around her face were damp and cleaved to her skin. The
snow was deep here and her booted feet were sunk into wells. It
wasn't snowing yet, but the air had that tingle to it and the sun had
been missing for hours. They stood within a woodland of giant white
spruce feather with club-moss, and cold cedars with corklike trunks.
Sword ferns and licorice ferns poked through the snow, brown and wiry
after the long winter.

Moss and silvery lichen grew on the rocks around
the lake and on the north and west faces of the trees. The lake
itself was small and darkly green. Much of its water was open, and
Ash wondered if it was stirred by underground springs.

She did not know what to make of Lan's request.
Part of her felt flattered. It seemed the kind of thing that
warriors in epic poems would beg from their secret loves before
heading off into battle and getting themselves horribly and
unexpectedly killed. Ash remembered reading such poems to Katia, and
them both agreeing it was all a bit silly. Then they'd go ahead and
re-enact them anyway. Because as well as being silly the poems were
also dreamily appealing. What was never in doubt was the fact that a
lady should count herself lucky to be asked for such a token. Yet it
didn't quite fit. Lan Fallstar never acknowledged what happened
between them in the tent at night, not by day, and he had not
proclaimed his everlasting love for her. She was still not sure he
even liked her. Even now, as his gaze lighted on the pink swell of
her breasts revealed by the damp fabric of her dress, he looked
disapproving as well as interested. She had a notion that Lan
Fallstar thought Ash March was beneath him. And the only time that
changed, or seemed to change, was during their lovemaking in the
tent.

Perhaps things were changing for him. Perhaps his
request revealed a growing, but reluctant, regard. The Far Rider's
gaze was level, his eyes inhumanly bright as they refracted light
from the snow.

Ash drew the mercy blade from her belt. Lan
watched her intently as she separated a lock of hair from the damp
sections surrounding her face. Drawing the blade close to her scalp
she cut it off. The lock was two feet in length and about as wide as
her little finger, and she wondered how many separate silver-blond
hairs were within it. She knotted it, not gently, and handed it to
him.