A Sword From Red Ice (99 page)

Raif smiled at the thought of Addie's conversation
with the lamb brothers. Both parties had acted well. The camp was on
the far side of one of the western hills bordering the lake. If he
wanted to, if either Addie or one of the mules would carry him, he
could travel the short distance to the wooded ridge and look down
upon the Red Ice.

He never would. Addie, who was wise about many
things, had been wisest about this. The ice was slowly melting, and
the lamb brothers were out upon it, doing whatever they needed to do
to release the souls of their dead. Things were being burned, he knew
that much. Even when he had been unconscious he smelled the meaty
smoke.

He had lost nine days of his life. The time was
gone and he had nothing but the memories of nightmares to show for
it. The first time he could recall waking was yesterday morning. He'd
heard blue jays calling. Ornery, mad-dog birds, that's what Tern
always called them. Raif seemed to recall some incident involving Da,
some strips of cured elk, and a pair of jays. It was the pleasure of
reconstructing the event—Was Da actually curing the meat
himself? Had the first bird distracted him while the other sneaked up
to the fire rack? And had the fire really been burning?—that
had finally awakened him. He had mistaken his thoughts for a real
world.

Addie and then Tallal had attended him. They
treated him with a kind of concerned awe, as if they were equally
amazed and worried by his recovery. Raif supposed he might feel the
same way himself if he were in their shoes. Addie had fussed himself
into a state and then left. The lamb brother had been more composed.
And efficient. Washing and doctoring had been done. Tallal's long
brown fingers had been careful as they touched Raif's back and the
livid purple burn on his chest.

Raif looked at the burn and realized he knew its
shape. "The stormglass."

Tallal had nodded once, a movement close to a bow.
He was wearing his hood and veil so that only his dark eyes with
their bluish eye whites showed. "It drew the lightning. This
lamb brother believes that when the lightning touched the stormglass
it started a stalled heart."

Raif had lain there, remembering things he had no
desire to remember. Dead fingers clutching a sword. Armor raised into
brutal ridges. The inhuman forms of the Endlords. What he could not
recall was what had happened after he pulled the sword from the ice.

"You wore the glass against your heart."

Had he? If it was so it was not by design. He'd
been hanging on by sheer luck there.

"The glass called us." Tallal's
expression seemed gentle. "We came."

Raif thought of the dam of mist, of all that lay
behind it. "How long?"

Tallal touched each black dot on the bridge of his
nose. "The Want is a desert of many mysteries. The lamb brothers
know few of them. The stormglass called as we lay down our mats for
Alash, the evening prayer. One of our brothers noted that a sickle
moon appeared in the sky at the same moment. That moon stayed with us
through the journey, and before it set we found you and the One Who
Knows Sheep on the ice."

Addie. The thought of the cragsman coming to find
him, having to walk across the landscape of raised and frozen corpses
and shattered ice, stirred Raif deeply. He would never know what the
cragsman had found, never understand what it cost him to approach the
burned and lifeless body that belonged to his friend.

Raif knew he owed Addie Gunn. There didn't seem
much chance of paying back a debt like that. You just had to live
with it.

He was less sure what he owed to the lamb
brothers. They had opened up his shoulder and drawn out the Shatan
Maer's claw. It had been the elder brother, not Tallal, who had done
the work. Raif was glad he had been asleep. Addie had told him that
he had lain on his stomach for three days while the strange and
unstable remains of shadowflesh were placed on the oozing wound.
Shadow drew shadow. The Unmade had been frozen in the lake too. Their
flesh corrupted quickly as it thawed, smoking to nothing like a pure
form of fuel. Addie said the brothers had farmed a single corpse for
the poultice, moderating its temperature by exposing the carcass to
sunlight or covering it with lake ice and skins. New strips were cut
and laid every hour. The cragsman had been eager to tell more, but
Raif did not want to hear it. At some point in the story the leeches
had started to look good.

"Popped out like a piece of gristle,"
Addie had said, unable to resist revealing the final detail. "Little
black thing, it was. Shiny as a dead fly."

Raif had told Addie to go. He could only take
knowledge like that in small doses. And he had not liked the word
farmed.

Easing himself further back against the rock, Raif
braced the weight of his upper body with his right arm. He knew
better than to use his left. It was still weak and spasms passed
along at unexpected moments, making it impossible to use with any
confidence. Tallal said it would heal, given time.

A cool breeze channeled up the hillside, stirring
the dark sea of trees. A lone heron was heading north, its scrawny
yellow feet swaying from side to side as it beat its powerful wings.
To the west the clanholds spread out in a series of hills and rolling
valleys. Clansmen must have taken to the woods, for Raif could see
several lines of smoke rising above the canopy. The warmer weather
had brought out hunters. Elk would be moving north, like the heron,
and moose would be calving. Boars would be out from their dens,
snuffling for bulbs in the damp earth beneath the trees. Raif thought
perhaps Tallal was right: He would heal. Already he wanted down
there. He wanted to be deep in the woods, hunting with a good heavy
spear and the Sull bow.

If he had no obligations that was what he would
choose to do with his life, he realized, idly scanning the valley for
game. If he could not be a clansman he would be a woodsman. Build
himself a cabin for the winters, take to the trails in spring and
summer, hunt, fish, learn some things about animals and nature. Swim
in black-water pools, eat rosehips warmed by the sun and berries
frozen by sudden frosts. Hopefully not die from cooking the wrong
kind of mushrooms. It would be a life not without struggle and
hardship. And it would be a life alone.

Raif thought of Ash then, her silver hair and fine
hands and long legs . . . and he could not imagine her into that
life. The dreams had no traction.

None of them did.

Back at the camp, Addie had walked the ewe from
the corral and was grooming it with something that looked like a
raccoon's ribcage. "Curly-haired," he'd said to Raif this
morning. "Solid little milker. Wouldn't have expected it from a
fancy." Between the sheep, the trapper's tea, and the lamb
brothers' herbs, Addie Gunn was a happy man. Still, his attention
wasn't fully on the ewe. Every now and then he'd sneak a look at Raif
whilst pretending to pull hairs from his newfangled comb. He was very
bad at pretending.

Raif angled his face to get some sun. It felt
good. Renewing. He now existed in a world where he had given his word
and kept it. Traggis Mole's bidding—half of it—had been
done, and Raif now possessed the sword named Loss. It was waiting for
him in the tent. He had not laid eyes on it since the day on the ice.
According to Addie it would need some work. "Never seen anything
like it," was the only comment he had offered on its form. Raif
felt a stirring of curiosity about the blade, and wondered if he
would ever learn the raven lord's name and history.

He also wondered, but would never ask, whether the
lamb brothers had released the man's soul. The raven lord's fate was
important to Raif Sevrance. He feared it would become his own. Soon,
the Endlords had promised him. The warmth of the sun could not stop
the chill from entering the damaged spaces in Raif's heart. They had
touched him through the frozen fingers of the raven lord. He'd seen
them . . . and been seen.

They knew him now, knew his name and his purpose.

And where to find him.

Pushing himself up with his fist, Raif muscled
himself to standing. He was Watcher of the Dead and he had a sword to
grind and sand. And here was Addie coming toward him to help down the
slope.

Soon.

A Stranger at Drover Jack's

Liddie Lott was spilling the ale again. It was bad
enough that she had kept the ewemen waiting five minutes while she
swapped labor-pains stories with Bronwyn Quince, but now that she had
actually managed to fill the tankards, a quarter of their contents
was splashing onto the floor. What was wrong with the woman, that she
couldn't even walk straight? Was one leg shorter than the other?

Gull Moler, owner and sole proprietor of Drover
Jack's, dabbed the sweat from his forehead with a yellow shammy. It
wouldn't do. It just wouldn't do. Those tankards were intended for
his three best customers: Burdale Ruff, Clyve Wheat and Silus Craw.
They were hard-talking ewemen and thrifty with their pennies and any
moment now the complaining would begin.

Silus Craw, who had arrived earlier than the
others and already had one ale inside him, was the first to notice
the short measures. Sitting behind an upended beer keg with his chair
against the wall, the little rat-faced drover made a show of peering
deep into the newly delivered tankard. "There's something
missing here if you ask me, Clyve."

Blond-eyebrowed Clyve Wheat leaned forward and
squinted into his own ale cup. After a moment of deep thought he
declared, "We should call her Liddie Spill-A-Lott."

Burdale Ruff and Silus Craw exploded into
laughter, stamping their feet against the floor and banging their
cups against the table. Liddie was only a few feet away, tending the
stew kettle, and she had to hear it when Silus cried, "Either
that or Liddie Talk-A-Lott."

As a second round of laughter erupted, Gull
grabbed the nearest ale jug from the counter and moved in to calm
everyone down.

"Gentlemen," he said, greeting the
drovers. "Allow me to top up your cups." The ale in the jug
happened to be his best barley stout, and although all of the men
were drinking yellow wheat none of them complained. Burdale Ruff had
actually downed most of his original drink, but Gull topped his cup
to the rim regardless. There were times to split hairs, and this
wasn't one of them. Business had been bad all week.

Just look at the place now. Early evening like
this and one of the god's days no less: every bench in the room
should be straining under the weight of fat traders, ewemen, day
laborers, and dairy girls. Talk should be loud and getting louder,
and someone somewhere should be singing about his sheep. Instead
there was a low and dreary hum, and sometimes even silence. Silence.
Only a third of the chairs were spoken for—and that was
counting Will Snug, who was passed out across two of them—and
there was not one single patron singing, gaming, or attempting to
impress the ladies with some puffed-up story about a small rod and a
very big fish.

It was not a sight to warm a tavernkeep's heart.
Oh, Drover Jack's itself was glowing. Those little pewter safelamps
he'd bought from the thane's stablemaster last spring burned cozily
from the oak-paneled walls, and every bench back, floorboard, and
tabletop was freshly waxed and gleaming. Smells of yeast, cured
leather, and woodsmoke combined to create a manly, welcoming scent.
It was a trim tavern, low-ceilinged, dim and inviting, and Gull liked
to imagine that there were some in these parts who'd count themselves
lucky to sup here. He just wished a few more of them had gotten off
their backsides and come here this night, is all.

A storm was passing through Ewe Country. As Gull
adjusted the stove's air vent, he could hear the wind howling
outside, blowing south from the Bitter Hills. The tavern creaked and
shuddered, and when Bronwyn Quince opened the door to leave, the
entire building wrestled with the wind.

Gull shivered. He was trying to decide whether he
should burn fresh coal or take his chances with more wood. The cord
of bog willow sent over by Will Snug in lieu of payment for an
outstanding debt burned like cow pats, and was probably worth about
as much. Still, there was a lot of it, and unlike coal it cost Gull
nothing to burn. Gull thought and frowned, reached for the wood,
stopped himself, and loaded his shovel with coal instead. Tonight
marked the beginning of Grass Watch and was therefore the holiest
night of spring, and if a man couldn't breathe clean air now then it
didn't bide well for the rest of the year.

Besides, you never knew when business might pick
up. As if on cue the door swung open and a column of air rushed in
the room. The flames in the stove leapt up as wooden beams shifted in
their cuppings and a dozen patrons looked toward the door.

Freezing rain sprayed through the entranceway,
glowing orange where the stovelight touched it. A figure, thickly
cloaked against the cold, stood in the doorway and surveyed the room.
After a moment, Silus Craw piped up "Close the door!" but
the figure did not heed him. A deep hood concealed the stranger's
face. Gull marked bulges at the stranger's waist and hip that had the
look of serious weaponry. Beginning to get worried, Gull set down his
shovel. He was going to have to do something about this. The action
drew the stranger's gaze his way, and Gull found himself looking into
a pair of copper eyes.

With a movement that wasted nothing, the stranger
closed the door. At that exact moment Liddie Lott came down the
stairs carrying a tray of beer taps that had been soaking all night
in lye. Liddie's mind was on her feet and her head was down, and all
you could see of her at first was her long chestnut hair. Like a
whip-crack the stranger's gaze came down upon her. Gull felt real
fear then. He had seen something he recognized in the stranger's
copper eyes, and his experience of dealing with men and women over
the past fifty years warned him it was the worst of all possible
states of mind. Desperation.