Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (16 page)

“Here, dry it with this.” He pressed a soft piece of cotton cloth into her hand and rose, looking at the huge carcass of the bear.

“You lost your provisions.”

“Bear ate them.” A nervous giggle crawled up her throat. She coughed, fighting it down. “I guess it came down from the Crest Mountains and caught the scent of the meat in my bag. It doesn’t matter. There’s enough meat on him to last the two of us until way past Solstice.”

He gave her a look.

“You don’t want to eat this bear.”

“I’m going to have to if I want to get to the Temple of the Wind.”

“Follow me.”

“Follow you? What? Where? Hey!”

And Diaz was back to being annoying again. He’d just walked off under the trees, expecting her to follow. Nora pulled her collar back up, tightening it around her exposed throat, and followed.

Not far from the carcass, the reek of rotten flesh was pervasive and it grew ever stronger the farther they went. It hung on the air like a fog. No sound stirred the place; only the indignant caws of ravens broke the silence as they hopped away from Diaz’s feet. He stopped just ahead and gestured her to come closer. Nora tugged her scarf over her face and breathed through her opened mouth.

Before her feet was a sudden drop in the ground, a hole dug deep and wide, but dug by human hands. Wooden stakes lined the pit, driven into the hard earth, spikes with pointed ends. And on top of those ends a number of dead people hung impaled—and they hadn’t hung there for long. She turned away hastily, retching. But her stomach was empty already and she hadn’t even had breakfast yet. Men lay at the bottom of this hole. Men killed by other men. Only humans were this cruel to their own kind.

She shook her head.

“Your bear smelled this, I reckon,” Diaz said and pointed at the pit. “And he’s eaten his fill. You can see the bones of the leg torn from this man and eaten over there.”

Her legs shook. She would definitely not eat the bear. She’d rather starve.

“What is this place?”

“It’s a death pit.” Diaz stared into the hole. “In ancient times, men believed that the gods desired human sacrifices. Before or after battles, sacrifices were made to beseech the gods’ blessing. A pit was dug, stakes were sharpened and prisoners were offered, but sometimes, when the need was desperate, a more valuable sacrifice was made. A nobleman, the chieftain’s beautiful virgin daughter. You get the picture. This is the third time I’ve seen something like this. The first time was in the south.”

“The gods are dead. They were destroyed by the Living Blade.”

“The Blade you say does not exist?” Diaz turned to look. Nora opened and shut her mouth a few times. “There are some people who believe that the Blade did not destroy the gods, but merely robbed them of their incarnation. They still linger among us, ready to answer an earnest prayer if given the right incentive: blood.”

They both stood for a moment, gazing at the brutality before them. Nora wanted to turn her head away from the wreckage but couldn’t. Her gaze was fixed on all that death.
Remember that you are mortal,
she thought. But this? This was just sick. Who would do this kind of thing? And for what? She thought of the chieftain she had killed at the inn on the Ridge. He had been just as crazy, just as deluded as the people who had done this, believing in prophecies, summoning dead gods with human sacrifice—it didn’t make sense to her. They should bury these poor people, shovel the pit full of earth and let those who were sacrificed to dead gods have whatever peace they could in the afterlife. She felt giddy and light-headed as though she were drunk, the stench of blood and guts was so overpowering.

“Well, there’s nothing for it.” Nora paused for dramatic effect, then gestured at the humans in the pit. “We’ll just have to eat them on our way.”

Diaz slowly turned his head to her, and she couldn’t hold the laughter in anymore.

“Sorry. But…your face!” She clasped a hand over her mouth but couldn’t stop the rib-hurting laughter until she was crying and bent over double with a red face. “So funny!”

“You have a very disturbing sense of humor.”

He straightened his cloak and walked past her, back straight. She followed, giggles like hiccups disturbing the icy silence. It was nerves. She knew it but couldn’t stop herself. It was either laugh or fall down and weep. And she couldn’t allow herself to weep right now. Weep and her feet would falter and she’d never see her brother again.

Diaz did skin the bear after all, while Nora searched the ground around her sleeping place for unspoiled food she could take along, still giggling to herself occasionally. It wasn’t much. A few apples, some small pouches of dried berries and nuts. She drank a sip of fresh water to fill her rumbling stomach and watched as Diaz rolled up the large pelt. She cleared her throat.

“You said this is the third time you’ve seen a death pit?”

“Yes.” He didn’t look at her but continued rolling. Yeah, he was still mad, she thought. She tried not to smile at the memory of his shocked face.

“Once in the south, you said. One today. And the other?”

He strapped the pelt onto his backpack and shouldered it before turning to face her.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“Moorfleet?”

He shook his head.

“Just behind Owen’s Ridge.”

T
hey spent the rest of
the day walking in silence. There was little to say. Any inclination to laugh had died the instant Diaz said those last words. Nora clutched her now uncomfortably light bag, willing her feet not to run back to Owen’s Ridge. What was done was done. There was no going back. She bit the insides of her cheeks until they were raw and followed Diaz across the Plains.

Dusk was falling already when they finally reached the river ford. Somewhere beyond the rolling gray skies the sun was setting, though Nora could neither see it nor feel its warmth. Around the pebbles on the banks, among the reeds and brush, were little pools of ice that broke away easily enough if she tapped them gently with her foot. The water would be colder this time. Her every breath hung in a mist before her mouth. Well, there was nothing for it; she couldn’t wait here for spring. She fumbled with her belt buckle and shot Diaz a sidelong glance. His head turned back to the river.

“The water will be cold,” he said. “We can make a fire on the other side.”

She grunted, stepping out of her boots, and pulled her trousers down as nonchalantly as she could. It wasn’t as though she were naked underneath. Her underwear covered anything Diaz could possibly catch a glimpse of. Not that he gave the impression of wanting to. And that was totally understandable: she was grimy and smelly and wounded, and besides, he likely thought her just a tiny bit insane for even trying this whole stupid quest for her brother. But…well. He could see all he liked, but there was nothing to see. Except the goose bumps that puckered the white skin of her legs. Gods, it was cold. However, trousers would soak up the icy water and she’d be freezing for hours to come, fire or no.

Diaz walked onto the riverbank, cracking the ice under his boot.

“Be mindful of your footing. The river isn’t deep, but its current is strong and the pebbles—”

“Pffft!”

Nora raised her chin up, shouldered her boots and trousers, and took the river in a storm, bare feet and all.

It was fucking cold! It was physical, and it punched with violence. Her feet were numb in an instant, and the cold coursed up her legs and sank its teeth into her hips. She automatically quickened her pace, her legs stepping high through the shallow water like a stork searching for frogs only finding none because it was splashing so godsdamn much! In the middle, the water reached her hips, and she snatched in deep breaths of air as though she were drowning. The cold seeped into her underwear as she raced to the other bank. Just get out. Of the water. Get warm soon.

With stiffly frozen fingers, getting dressed on the far side of the river was more than difficult. Her wet legs snagged on the woolen trousers, and she cursed them and her trousers and herself in breathless whispers. Her teeth chattered and wouldn’t stop for a long time, even after she had slipped back into her warm, dry clothes and curled into her sleeping furs.

She watched as Diaz strode out of the river, water gushing off him. He seemed oblivious to any feeling of cold or discomfort. His trouser legs stuck to him as he busied himself with lighting a fire under the branches of a little gathering of trees too big to be called a copse, too small to be a wood. Once the fire was going, he rolled out the fresh bear pelt onto the ground and nodded for her to sit on it.

Nora sat in front of the fire, knees clasped to her body, lower jaw shivering.

“Not cold?” she managed to ask him.

“I am. But I’ll get warm again. Tea?”

She nodded and Diaz heated some water over the fire. He was still dripping. She winced and massaged her aching legs, feeling awake and utterly spent at the same time. It was a strange state of being, but one she was accustomed to. It was what tending the charcoal burning had sometimes felt like. The only difference was, she had shared that state with her twin. Never anyone else.

Diaz sat down on the bear pelt next to her and offered a small metal mug full of hot liquid. Nora took it gladly. A fresh scent rose in the steam, of balm and fennel and peppermint. For a long time, they both stared into the fire, holding the mugs to warm their hands if not their hearts.

“I’ve never seen anyone fight like that. Who taught you?” Nora asked.

Diaz took a sip from his cup. Then he licked his lips.

“Mostly the other man I was fighting,” he answered. “If you survive a few fights, you pick up a number of tricks to keep on surviving. But if you’re talking about the basics, my father taught me those.”

Nora held her face above the steam rising from her cup, inhaling the warmth and the scent.

“My mother was a human. Like you,” Diaz said after another sip from his cup.

Nora’s eyebrows went up high.

“My father…,” Diaz started. Then he shook his head. “The wights say I’m human. The humans say I’m a wight. Now I am a pilgrim. It seemed to be the most obvious choice. I never went back. Even when my mother died, I never went back.”

He took another sip.

“How did she die?”

“Of old age.”

Nora’s face must have shown her puzzlement. Diaz didn’t look much older than his late twenties, maybe early thirties. Although, the wights were also called the Everlasting.

“I’m eighty-seven,” he explained and half smiled at her expression. “Wights can live to be a thousand years old. Can you imagine how young I am to them?”

Nora’s eyes widened. “And you? How long will you live?”

“All in all? Probably about three hundred, four hundred years. If I don’t fall in battle before.”

“Well. That goes without saying.”

Nora was stunned. She pondered how long three hundred years were. Owen was good at the histories of the world. What might the world have been like three hundred years ago? Or even one hundred years ago? She had no idea. Probably not that different. Same people doing the same things, she guessed. Eating and drinking and making sure they had enough of both, working, marrying, and being given in marriage. Children. Blah, blah, blah. Nothing ever really changed, did it? Or maybe humans didn’t live long enough to see the change.

“Are there more like you? Half-wights?”

He ran a hand through his dark hair. Owen did that too. Did full wights even have hair? Every picture Nora had seen of the wights showed them as lizard-like, hairless. She cocked her head and studied his face for the first time. If the eyes didn’t put you off, he was handsome in his own way. Handsome not as in good-looking, but striking in his hard masculinity.
Yeah, definitely striking,
she thought. Those eyes, though.

“Not in the north, no. But far in the south, beyond the desert sands, there are large clans of half-wights in the mountains. They stay among themselves mostly.”

He emptied his cup.

“Why do you ask?”

Nora shrugged.

“You’re a master pilgrim. A master warrior. I was wondering…”

“Yes?”

“See, my father was a master smith. You can only be a master when you teach someone else your trade. You call yourself master. I assume you’ve had apprentices?”

“Ah.” Diaz stared into the fire. It reflected in his black eyes. “No, I have not.”

“No?” Nora’s brow furrowed. “Why not? No one asked you before?”

His face was unreadable. Diaz took a deep breath and checked the depth of his cup for a last sip of tea. There was nothing left, though. He pursed his lips.

“Teaching another person is a weighty commitment. For now, I have given my oath to the prince to aid him on his quest to find the Living Blade.”

He gave her a look as though daring her to ask him already. Nora gave him back her empty cup.

He took it; their fingertips brushed briefly. The back of his hand was scarred white like the snow. The scars were old, but looked as though he had held his hand against a burning ember. Or someone had held a burning ember against his hand, anyway. She snatched her fingers away and glanced at his black eyes.