A Sword From Red Ice (44 page)

Not long after that they headed on their way. The
mist was finally breaking up and cold white sunlight slanted through
the birches. Lan's pace was a fraction slower than before and she
found herself drawing abreast of him more often. Briefly Ash wondered
why they had to walk the birch way and could not ride. She thought
about asking him, but stopped herself. She did not want to test this
new goodwill between them.

With the mist gone the birches began to gleam like
bones. Thousands became visible, layers and layers of trees
stretching toward the horizon on all sides. Ash was glad to see her
feet and found herself looking at them often. The variety of
materials squelched by her boots was the only thing that changed in
the landscape. The air smelled faintly of methane, and she wondered
if part of the birch way was a bog. If they strayed too far off
course here might they sink? For a while she tracked Lan's gaze as it
slid through the trees, hoping to discover something about his
methods of navigation, but she lost interest after a while. Her hands
and wrists still felt hot where he had touched them. Lan said, "Let
us stop here."

It was earlier than they would normally stop, but
Ash was glad. She was hungry, and tired of looking at trees. As she
unstrapped the fallen timber she had collected, the Far Rider set
about unpacking his saddlebags. When she realized he was sliding out
the tent, muscles in her stomach contracted in a way that made her
feel half sick and half excited. Fumbling with the logs, she managed
to drop a couple against the gelding's back hoof. "Sorry,"
she told the horse, kneeling awkwardly to pick them up.

After she'd built the fire and lit it she waited
to feel more relaxed. The ground was dry here and she threw down her
saddle and sat on it. Lan had finished pitching the tent and was now
preparing their supper. She had come to him empty-handed—her
saddlebags had been lost south of the Flow—and she was
dependent upon his cooking utensils and food to eat. When she had
met him she had been living on horse blood for seven days.

Lan cut up slices of cured horsemeat and dried
mushrooms and put them in a pot with rich yellow kidney fat, cardamom
seeds, and snowmelt. He worked quickly and with precision, using the
same knife he had burned his skin with the night they first met. When
he was done he cleaned the blade with oil that smelled of cloves, and
a scrap of deerskin, and then sat in silence while the water in the
pot came to a boil. A full moon rose as they waited.

"Take," Lan said, homing out a bowl of
steaming and fragrant soup. She took it and their fingertips touched
across the smooth glazed warmth of the bowl. The Far Rider watched
her take her first drink. "Good?" he inquired, his voice
almost gruff.

She nodded. It was bitter and rich with fat. She
drank it all and then took her knife and speared the meat and fleshy
mushrooms left at the bottom. It must have given her courage, for she
said, "Why put up the tent? The moon is still full." Blood
came to her face as she asked the question and she wished she could
take it back. It seemed bold and reckless. And he would make her pay
for it.

Lan set down his soup, long fingers carefully
cupping the bowl. The lead clasps in his hair clicked together as he
moved. "It is the first day of the full moon that is most
sacred. We cannot count ourselves Sull unless we feel its light upon
our faces thirteen days a year." His voice was stiff but she
recognized he had made an effort.

She wanted to know more, but had no way of gauging
how long his new patience would last so she said nothing further.
When she leaned toward the fire and poured herself more soup it
seemed to please him. Absurdly she felt glad.

Later, as she rose to tend the gelding, he stood
also. "I will feed and water your horse," he said. "It
is owed."

From this morning? How could such a small thing
incur debt? Baffled, she bowed her head, and watched as he crossed to
the area where the horses where pulling seaweed-like sedge from
beneath the snow. After a few moments her gaze jumped to the tent.

She breathed deeply and went for a pee. Squatting
in the shadows behind the tent, she hiked up her cloak and dress and
relieved herself. When she was done she took a handful of snow and
rubbed it between her legs.

When she emerged into the light of the campfire
her face and neck were icy and dripping; she had washed them for good
measure as well. Glancing at the Far Rider she saw that he was intent
on picking out twigs from the hoofs of his stallion. He did not look
up as she slipped inside the tent.

It was cool in here, and smelled of wolf. Light
from the moon pierced pin-size holes in the skins. Quickly Ash
stripped off her clothes and made a bed for herself out of blankets
and furs. Snuggling down she curled into a ball. And told herself she
wasn't waiting.

She felt peculiarly excited by her makeshift
preparations. Their practicality seemed audacious. In her mind she
had borrowed some forwardness from Katia. It seemed necessary.

Time passed and the pinholes of light changed
angles. Noises occasionally sounded from outside; horses blowing
air, the hiss of snow on the fire, the mournful call of the great
white owl. Ash listened intently at first, her body shivering with
restlessness and cold, but when every new sound failed to produce Lan
Fallstar she gave up. It didn't seem possible but eventually she
slept.

Her dreams were of the grayness that touched
everything yet no one but she could see. The creatures that bided
there uncurled their rotting limbs and claws as she passed. Some
hissed. They watched her with narrow and glinting eyes, glad that she
had not come in the flesh. Beyond them, a dark and immense presence
was moving just beyond her perception. She felt its great age and
momentum, and perceived the utter coldness of its purpose.
Mistressss, it called through shadows that swarmed it like wasps, do
not wake.

Ash awoke. She was not alone. Lan Fallstar lay
beside her, his body still, his breathing metered. The moon had set
but it was not wholly dark; starlight blued the tent.

What am I? Ash wondered. She had been told she was
a Reach by Heritas Cant and Ark Veinsplitter, but she did not know
what that meant. She was shaking, she realized, her chest and stomach
vibrating intensely. Do not wake. The words had been a warning. Did
that mean the creatures in the Blind were afraid of her? Why? Ark had
hinted that she could track the shadow beasts, perceive them over
distance. Was that reason enough?

Teeth chattering, she rolled over, twisting the
blankets and lynx fur around her body. She felt icy cold. The
nightmare had sucked away her warmth. Do not wake.

She reached for Lan Fallstar in the dim blue light
of the tent. She hardly knew what she was doing but she craved his
warmth and was desperate to feel his live body pressing against hers.
He gasped as she touched him, and she felt him hesitate. He had not
been asleep, she was sure of that. A moment passed where he might
have moved away from her, where his hands were up and touching her
hands and it would have been a small thing for him to push back. He
did not push back, instead he sighed sharply, parting his hands and
sliding them down to her waist. A quick, almost violent flexing of
muscle brought her next to him. Ash smelled him, the alienness of his
skin and sweat. As he thrust through blankets and furs to grab her
buttocks she kissed him. Her mouth was wet and full of saliva and it
coated his lip before he opened them to kiss her back. Their teeth
knocked together with an odd dissonance, and it slowed her for a
moment. Lan's hand was moving between her thighs now and she could
not understand why it was taking so long to reach where it needed to
be. Her sex was hot and wet. It ached, literally ached, to be
touched.

He did not taste human and that excited her. As
she curled her tongue against the roof of his mouth he slid his hand
against her sex. Ash opened her legs wider. Her tongue stiffened. Hot
pulses passed along her belly. One finger found a sweet spot and
rubbed it softly but insistently. She could hear the wetness swish
against his hand. Grabbing him firmly she arched her hips toward him.
The finger moved faster, its pressure increasing. With her free hand
he squeezed her buttocks, his fingertips jamming into the point where
they met. Ash gasped. All she wanted him to do was not stop. The
finger was creating delicious friction deep beneath her skin.
Suddenly the tension broke and her legs and hips started jerking.
Heat pulsed down her thighs and up through her belly and she lost
control of herself, grasping at his ribs and pushing against his
hand. She did not breathe until it stopped.

Afterward he pulled himself on top of her and
pressed his hard sex against her own. As he broke the fine membrane
of skin that protected her body and entered her, he murmured, "Isht
xalla tannan."

I know the value of that which I take.

Outside the tent the wind began to rattle the
birches.

Hunting Prey

Raif reached the city on the edge of the abyss
just as the sleet started. Smoke from the cave fires blew in his
face. He could not say the familiar scent of burning sedge and willow
canes made him glad to be back. He had a strong desire to set down
his kit, rest, and not enter, but it was already too late for that.

"Twelve Kill on the ledge!" came the cry
from a watcher on the high wind-carved cliff above him. Raif
acknowledged the man with an open hand, yet did not look up. Already
he could hear the call being relayed across the ledgerock, echoing
from cave to cave and ledge to ledge, moving up cane ladders and
rock-cut stairs, along tunnels and stone galleries before finally
plunging down into the Rift.

"Kill. Kill. Kill" Raif heard. His name
reduced to a single word.

The children came out first. Skinny and clothed in
fine silks and brocades gone to rags, they kept their distance and
stared at him with big eyes as if they had reason to be afraid. One
older boy bounced a stone in his cupped fist, his tight little mouth
twitching. Raif looked him in the eyes, looked long, and the boy
caught the stone, closed his fist, and dropped his hand against his
side.

The Maimed Men and their women came out next and
they were not a lovely sight. Dressed in dyed leather shirts and
tunics, animal skins with the heads still attached, armored cloaks,
spiked helms, rat-fur hoods, scaled breastplates, steel gauntlets,
burned dresses, boned bodices, goat fleece collars and kilts and all
manner of straps, belts, packs and chains, they did their name proud.
Every one of them was lacking; a missing eye or arm, a clubfoot, a
deformed spine, a cleft palate, a claw hand, a wine-stained face,
absent flesh, extra flesh. Things not present at birth and others
taken away later. Raif became aware of his own missing flesh—the
tip of his little finger, cut off at the knuckle—and wondered
if he would ever lose enough of himself to feel at home here. He had
a brief but intensely strong desire to run, turn and flee back to the
canyonlands and Badlands—places where the land was the only
thing that was wasted. The cragsman Addie Gunn's words came back to
him. "None of us are whole." He had not been speaking about
flesh.

Raif walked steadily through the growing crowd,
matching gazes only when he had to, when faced with the choice of
meeting a challenge or backing down. Beneath the ledge of green
rimrock, the Rift was trembling. The vast fissure in the earth was as
dark and wet as a fresh wound and it gave off the same metallic odor.
Last time he was here he remembered watching birds in flight below
him, kitty hawks and swallows and turkey vultures. Today the Rift was
full of nothing. It was the deepest hole in the earth and no man
alive had ever returned from it. Its bottom could not be seen or
known. On the clearest day with the sun directly overhead there was a
point beyond which the eye could not see. Raif Sevrance had looked
down on such a day, his gaze tracking the cracked and uneven
cliffwall, past layers of ironstone, sandstone, limestone, hermit
shale, granite, green marble, pyrite slate and schist, past the dark
recesses of undercut caves, steam vents, and well heads before
finally coming to rest at the point where the darkness rolled and
swirled like hot tar finding its level. Raif found it hard to watch
and soon looked away. It struck him that it was a moat defending a
fastness: a layer that could not be penetrated without sanction.

His shoulders jerked in a single, deep shiver. His
clothes were wet and he was sick of traveling. For the past two days
he had done nothing but walk. Within the hard shell of his leather
boots his feet were wrapped in rags and dried grass. His left ankle
was still badly swollen, and a blister on the heel oozed watery blood
into the makeshift padding. He knew better than to show this, not
here in the city of Maimed Men, and walked without limp or stiffness,
keeping his back straight and his hand close to the hilt of his bent
sword.

Light was beginning to fail as he approached the
center of the rim-rock. A firepile had been stacked and primed, and
the crowd began to gather around it. Raif spotted the dark and
unfriendly face of Linden Moodie, the Rift brother who had led the
raid on Black Hole. The garrote scar circling his neck was partially
covered by a silver and black wool mantle. Raif met Moodie'a gaze,
confirming to himself that he was not mistaken. Linden Moodie had
deliberately worn his spoils from the raid on Blackhail's silver
mine. I dare you, his brown eyes challenged, to show a reaction to
the colors of your once and deserted clan.

Raif did not know what expression was showing on
his face, only that it did not change when faced with Moodie. He
breathed deeply and allowed only surface thoughts to work upon his
brain. He had not expected much coming here. No surprises so far.