A Sword From Red Ice (80 page)

It was something Bram had not expected, this
everyday acceptance. After he had spoken First Oath on the banks of
the Milk, Wrayan Castlemilk had stood with her skirt hem floating in
the water and said to him, "Now you are a Castleman for a year."
Bram was only now beginning to realize the power of those words.

Reaching the ground floor, Bram decided not to
risk the temptation of the kitchens and headed out the main door
instead. Yesterday Millard Flag had caught him pouring fresh milk
into a vat that hadn't been submerged for sufficient time in the
boiler. The punishment for this gross violation of dairy law had
consisted of something the head dairyman liked to call "pat
watch," which involved a lot more forking than watching, and
left a man smelling so bad that afterward he had to roll in the snow.
Besides, there was usually food in the dairy. Cheese, curds, yogurt:
you could scrounge something milky most days.

It had snowed a couple of inches in the night and
Enoch Odkin and Beesweese were on shovel duty, clearing the front
court of snow. Enoch waved to him, and Bram considered asking the
yearman about Dalhousie's strange behavior with the sword, but
decided he didn't have time.

Hunching up his shoulders against the cold, he
rushed down the Milkhouse steps. Directly ahead, the bargeman was
pulling a man and his horse across the river. The horse's dark brown
coat was so glossy it looked varnished. Its owner, who was standing
talking to the bargeman as he cranked the rope, was dressed in a long
wheat-colored saddle coat that was belted at the waist. He was
holding something dark in his hand; it might have been a pair of
gloves or a day-pack. As Bram watched, the stranger's gaze turned
toward him. It seemed a deliberate thing, as if the man had known
Bram was there yet had delayed looking at him until he was good and
ready. His eyes were yellow-green.

Bram turned away. A sharp breeze was channeling
east along the Milk and it made him shiver. The dairy was situated to
the rear of the roundhouse so he broke into a run to keep warm. It
was two hours before noon and the sun was as small and pale as a chip
of bone.

Last night's snow squeaked under his feet as he
neared the first dairyshed. The hard standing would need to be
shoveled so the cows who were due to calf could be walked, and Bram
thought he might just as well get to it. Popping his head around the
door, he called out a greeting. It was between milking times and the
dairymaids were standing about eating fancies topped with dried
cherries, and supping on watery mead they brewed themselves. They all
swore they never drank milk.

"Bramee," they cried in chorus, teasing.
There were five of them, dressed in stiff white aprons over blue
dresses, and dainty caps that were worn in defiance of Millard Flag.
The head dairyman would have preferred something bigger. "Bramee."

Every morning without fail this greeting
accomplished two things: made the girls giggle uncontrollably at
their own wit, and caused Bram's face to turn red. He couldn't work
out why, after nearly a month, this continued to happen.

As soon as he'd unhooked the snow shovel from its
peg behind the door, he went back outside. This morning's training
session with Dalhousie had concentrated on the techniques necessary
to block blows aimed at the head and chest, and Bram's ribs had taken
a beating. He thought he might have blocked one in ten. Dalhousie was
fast and he had countless subtle ways of varying an attack. They
looked the same, but when they hit you each one felt different. Bram
had given up worrying about bruises and now dealt with them the same
way as Enoch Odkin, Beesweese and Trotty Pickering did: covered them
in pig's lard and boasted about them. It seemed to work.

The new snow was fluffy and only a quarter-foot
deep, and it didn't pain his ribs much to shift it. As he was
finishing off, Millard Flag came out and informed him he was needed
for heavy lifting in the milk room. "Boiler and count to ten a
dozen times," he said wagging a finger.

That was the number of seconds that you had to
count off before you could remove the chums and steel pails from the
hot-water bath and reuse them. Yesterday Bram had stopped count at
eighty-four.

The milk room was large and noisy. Worktables
lined the space, and both sets of double doors—front and
back—were kept open throughout the day. Two dairymaids were
skimming the cream from the new pails and a third was pouring milk
through a wire strainer. Millard Flag and his apprentice, Little
Coll, were tilting one of the big cheese vats to pour off the brine.
Bram was told to carry various items—two sealed churns, some
trays of newly blocked butter wrapped in cloths, and a stack of
cheese in tin molds—down to the cold room which lay directly
beneath the milk room. After that he was to head outside and feed the
boiler fire.

Bram was on his third run down the ancient stone
steps when Millard called his name. Hands full with a tray of butter,
Bram called out he would be up in a minute. The cold room was dark
and low-ceilinged, with crumbly stone walls and a limewashed floor.
It smelled like fat and raw earth. None of the dairymaids liked to
come here, and they usually sent for Bram or Little Coll if they
needed something brought aboveground.

As he slid the tray into one of the deep recesses
in the walls, Bram heard a footfall on the stairs.

"I see you are working hard," Wrayan
Castlemilk said descending the final steps and entering the chill
shadows of the cold room. Fine silver chains at her throat and wrists
gleamed as she moved around the chamber. "I don't believe I have
been down here since I was a girl. I imagined it bigger and more . .
. frightful. My brother once told me they slaughtered cows here. He
bolted that door on me one evening. Didn't come back. The old
dairyman Windle Hench found me here the next morning. Apparently I
was sitting right where you stand now, calmly eating a wedge of
cheese ."

Bram could believe it. Wiping his hands on his
pant legs, he said, "Lady."

This seemed to amuse her. Her dress was made from
smooth blue wool and she wore a simple matching cloak. A pair of
gloves were tucked into her bodice, and her brown leather boots had
little piles of snow on the toes. Bram seemed to remember Mabb
telling him once that the better the boot the longer the snow took to
melt. "A messenger arrived from Dhoone last night," she
said, apparently in no hurry to head back up the steps. "Robbie
sends his greetings."

Muscles in Bram's chest did strange things. "He
knows I am here?" He heard the hope in his voice and was
surprised by it. He hadn't known it was there.

"Oh yes," Wrayan said, looking at him
very carefully. "I made sure he knew you had arrived safely and
taken First Oath."

Bram understood that she had declared him out of
bounds to his brother. Robbie Dun Dhoone could stake no claim on Bram
Cormac for one year. It was hard not to imagine Robbie's face when he
received the news. He must have felt a moment's misgiving. They were
brothers. They'd shared breakfast, blankets, head colds, punishments,
adventures, secrets, cloaks, boots. It had to mean something. Bram
was sure it had to mean something. "Did he send any message?"

"No." The Milk chief's voice was level.
After she had delivered this answer she did Bram the kindness of
walking over to the right wall and inspecting the rows of churns that
stood there.

He sent his greetings, Bram reminded himself.
Surely that is a good message in itself? He took a breath, trying to
force out the tightness in his chest.

"Someone sent you a message, though,"
Wrayan said, glancing at Bram over her shoulder. "Apparently Guy
Morloch wants his horse back."

Bram hung his head. What could he possibly say to
that?

"I told him to go to hell. Formally seized
the horse for Castlemilk—I am chief, I do things like that—and
now I gift the stallion, without condition, to you." She smiled,
and it was such a lovely and unexpected thing it warmed the room. "I
believe it's got some godawful name, like Gilderhand or Girdlegloom.
Guy Morloch always was a stuck-up little shit."

"Gaberil," Bram said.

They both laughed. Because Wrayan Castlemilk was
chief and knew it, she took the lid off one of the vats and poked the
setting cheese. If anyone in the dairy had done that they'd be on pat
watch for a week.

"So," she said, wiping her finger on one
of the cheesecloths, "I believe our swordmaster has taken your
sword."

Bram could barely keep up with her. "Yes,
lady."

"It's quite a choice you have coming up."
Seeing his confusion she explained, "At Castlemilk when a
swordmaster takes your sword it means he's claiming you as an
apprentice. Dalhousie believes you're quick enough to be a first-rate
swordsman."

This was so surprising, Bram had to go over the
chief's words one by one in his head. He felt as if he were a piece
of cooling metal that she kept plunging into hot and cold water to
temper. Dalhousie wanted him as an apprentice? He'd received only two
pieces of praise from the swordmaster in all the weeks he'd trained
under him—and one of them was today. You're getting better on
your feet.

"Of course," Wrayan said, preparing to
leave, "training to become a master swordsman is a task that
will take up the better part of each day. Just as a guide's training
would." Another plunge into hot water. The Milk chief's gaze
assessed him shrewdly. "So you must choose which one you will
be."

Waving a hand in farewell, Wrayan Castlemilk took
the stairs and left.

Bram felt as if he'd lived an entire life in the
scant minutes she had been here. He had to stand for a while just to
let it all sink in. Bram Cormac now possessed a very fine and
slightly needy stallion. Dalhousie wanted him as an apprentice.

And his older brother knew he had taken the
Castlemilk oath. Robbie knew yet had sent no message of goodwill. He
is busy, Bram told himself harshly. He has an entire clanhold to
secure. Suddenly needing to get outside into the light, Bram righted
the lid on the cheese vat—Wrayan Castlemilk had not replaced
it—and then headed up the steps. Guide or master swordsman. He
knew he was lucky to have such a choice. Yet he didn't feel lucky,
just confused. Was it ungrateful to want something more?

The dairymaids were now busy with the churning and
the steady thump and slop of the plungers competed with the sound of
Millard Flag and Little Coll stacking vats against the far wall. The
head dairyman looked up at Bram as he emerged from the cold room, a
question on his small wrinkled face. Bram ignored it. He had to get
out of the noise. He knew he was due to feed the boiler, which lay
just outside the milk room so the heat from the fire wouldn't spoil
the churning, but he passed it right by.

The dairy court was quiet except for a half dozen
cows that had been walked onto the newly cleared ground and tossed a
bale of hay. The dairymaid watching over them was keeping herself
warm by hugging a hot stone wrapped in a blanket to her chest. She
regarded Bram with some interest as he passed. Only minutes earlier
the chief had visited the milk room and now here was Bram Cormac
coming out. That would give the dairymaids something to talk about at
second milking.

Bram checked on the sun. It wouldn't be long now
before midday. Drouse Ogmore would expect him at the guidehouse at
noon and there was no telling how long the guide would keep
him—usually till well after dark. Ogmore was currently teaching
him how to sift and grade the rock dust that shed from the stone
during chiseling. An elaborate succession of hoop-shaped sieves was
employed, and once the dust had been separated into particles of
similar size, the larger pieces had to be sorted by hand. Stone
chips, pieces of chalk, pyrite nuggets, fossils and pellets of
hardened shale oil: all had to be separated and judged. It was the
judging that was the difficult thing, the developing of an eye for
pieces that were extraordinary and needed to be set aside for special
use. Bram erred on the side of caution, and had been saving a lot of
grit. Trouble was, if you stared at any piece of stone for long
enough it began to look like it was special. There were always
shadings and sparkly bits and veins.

The fine powder that made it to the bottom of the
sieving process was easy to deal with. It was packed in small purses
and sent out to the [garbled] to use in the fields. The next level
might be employed in the roundhouse—a small percentage of the
sand overlaying the Churn Hall floor was guidestone—and it was
custom to sprinkle a portion on all hearths that were newly lit. The
level up from that was where the grit lay and it was here that things
began to get tricky. Tiny pieces of guidestone, no bigger than
pumpkin seeds, had to be sorted by hand. Ogmore could do it in a
single movement, passing a flat palm over the chips as they lay atop
the wire mesh. The action would turn the pieces over and it was this
turning, this revelation of a second side, that was enough for Ogmore
to pick out anything worthwhile. "The important pieces flash
like diamonds," he had said to Bram more than once. "When
your eye is trained you will spot them straightaway."

Bram figured his eye needed more training. The day
before yesterday he had picked out every shiny piece from the third
layer—it had taken him more than two hours—only to have
Ogmore come along and dump it all back in the sieve. "No. No.
No," he had cried. "All stones that shine are not precious
and not all precious stones shine." Bram had been deeply
confused.

Ogmore had picked a chip from the sieve. "This,"
he had said, holding it between his index finger and thumb so Bram
could take a look at it, "is what we look for. See how its lines
of cleavage fall counter to its veins?" Bram nodded. It was a
tiny thing but if you squinted hard you could just make out where the
chip had split off from the guidestone on a plain counter to its weak
points. Like a piece of meat cut across the grain. "That's where
the gods lie. There. They are not bound by the laws of nature. I chip
one way, using the lines of cleavage to aid my work, and the gods are
content for me to do so and remain passive within the stone. Every so
often though they push against the natural order—that is how
gods work. This push is what we look for in the stone chips. It gives
us evidence the gods are nimble. And reminds us we suffer their
tolerance. If they chose to they could sunder the entire stone—look
at the Hailstone, blasted to nothing. That is why we must monitor
what is shed from the stone. Vigilance is the first and greatest
responsibility of all clan guides, and vigilance begins with sifting
through the dust."