A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) (16 page)

“I see you’ve marked the spiral course of the flights,” the Listener said in an unusually quiet voice. “Yet have you also marked their substance?”

Raif had not. Turning the arrow, he studied the pale, translucent hairs that had been set into the bone and trimmed to an inch in length. “Ice-wolf hair,” he guessed. Then, seeing the Listener still waiting, “Lynx . . . snow tiger.” Still the old man waited and as he did the answer came. “Human hair.”

“Not quite human, no, but close.” The old man studied Raif in the silence that followed, seeming to judge his readiness . . . for what? With a small shrug, he finally spoke. “Have you heard tell of the Old Ones who once walked this land before Men? Some say they were like us, in that they had eyes and mouths and stood on two feet, and were as beautiful in their way as the Sull. This land wasn’t always hard froze, you must remember that. In ages past the Great Want was green with trees, and blue water flowed there along riverbeds so broad and deep that entire villages could be tossed into their centers and sink without a trace. The riverbeds are still there, if you know where to look for them, and many other things lie abandoned too. There are halls in the heart of the Want, raised from ancient timbers that take an Age to rot. The Old Ones built them, and some say their skills grew at great cost to their defenses, and they built a beautiful but flawed fortress where the Last Battle was fought and lost.
Ben Horo
, the Sull call it. The Time Before. The Sull think they are the only ones who honor and remember the Old Ones, but they can be blind in their arrogance and they forget that old men such as me can hear many things that they cannot.”

Pride shone briefly in the Listener’s eyes and then was gone. Raif turned the named arrow in his hand as Sadaluk continued speaking, and it seemed as though the night turned too, spinning like the arrow in flight toward a point the old man had long since set in his sights.

“
Mor Drakka,
Watcher of the Dead, I name you. I saw you long before you knew yourself and took your first life. The Sull see you as a threat and a curse, for it is written that one day
Mor Drakka
will bring their doom. They are a proud and ancient race and their numbers have been declining for ten thousand years, and they fear you are the one who will watch their end. You live only because they need as well as fear you. And because when you loose an arrow it finds a heart.

“No, do not gainsay me, Clansman. You forget who I am.” Again, the pride was there, flashing bright like lightning before dimming to nothing at all. “Take this arrow named Divining Rod that has been fletched with the Old Ones’ hair, take it and use it to find what you must. It seeks—what, I cannot tell you for the echoes from things so old are weak. I have guarded it for sixty years and Lootavek for a hundred before me, and before him Kullahuk, and before him the great Tungis himself. Many hands have touched it. None have set it to a plate and drawn power behind it.
Wait
, they said.
One day someone will come and we will know from his hands and his spirit that he will use the arrow well
.”

The Listener returned his attention to the chest, pushing his hands once again through the moss. “I cannot say I was glad to see you come here, and I fear that even when you leave the seal will not return. Yet how can I change such things? What choices do we have, you and I?”

Raif held the old man’s gaze. He felt sad and weary, and suddenly the arrow seemed less like a treasure than a debt. Quietly, he slipped it into one of the many game pouches sewn within the seal coat.

“Grow wide shoulders, Clansman—you’ll need them for all your burdens.” The Listener pulled something out of the chest, something heavy and long and wrapped in old skins. The old man looked up, and there was a twinkle of mischief newly come to his eyes. “You might think I’d give you a bow to match that fine arrow of yours. You might think it, but you’d be wrong. I’m old and contrary and have a fancy to give you a sword. And, as there’s no one but gods here to stop me, I will.” He handed it to Raif. “Unwrap it. It’s time you learned how to kill someone and look them in the eye.”

Raif winced at the insult. He had drawn a sword against men before today. Three had died by his hand outside Duff’s . . . and yet he had no memory of that night; all his knowledge came secondhand from Angus Lok. Perhaps the Listener was right: he had taken refuge behind the bow, distancing himself from his heart-kills, and denying his enemies the simple grace of being able to look into the eyes of the man who killed them. Ayan Blackhail had learned that lesson at the loss of both hands.
An arrow is no way to kill a king. You should have used your sword or naught at all.

Raif unwrapped the sword. Could he heart-kill a man with this? And if he did, would the death be more honorable for it?

The old man watched in silence as Raif inspected the sword. It was foreign-made of fine blued steel, neither clannish nor Sull-like in design. A span short of a true longsword, double-edged with a hand-and-a-half grip, it was forged for close combat on foot. Raif held the weapon up to the lamp, watched as the patterning of the blade scattered the light. Taking the unpadded wire grip in his hand he tested for the sword’s balance, then touched the wooden chest with its point to proof its temper. The blade was well fitted and sound, though its edges needed grinding. The sword’s hilt formed a plain cross, and its pommel was surmounted by a faceted chunk of rock crystal as big as a child’s eye. Holding it, Raif thought of Tem, of Tem’s humble halfsword that Drey had given him after Da’s death, and that had been taken by Cluff Drybannock on the slopes of the Bitter Hills.
Da would have loved this.

“You’ll have to make yourself a scabbard for it, find a skin to wrap around the grip. It should serve you well enough until you find a better one.”

Raif looked up.

“What, Clansman? Did you really think this will be the sword that makes you?”

“No. I . . . I don’t know . . .” Raif heard himself stumbling. “Thank you. It is a fine sword.”

“It should be. I took it from a knight’s corpse. Don’t worry, I didn’t kill him. Poor soul was on a pilgrimage to the Lake of Lost Men, got lost himself and died.” The old man sealed the chest and then stood. “Quite useful, really, the Forsworn. At least one of them gets lost here each season. We Ice Trappers depend upon it.” Pushing the chest back into the cache hole, he said, “I’ll see you receive clothes and provisions in the morning. Tonight, I promised a certain widow I would visit her for the benefit of our mutual health. Sleep well and remember what I said: learn to use your gift through the sword. It will be better for you in the end.” With that Sadaluk sealed the cache and made his way toward the door. “I do not envy you, Clansman, though I find myself wishing I could join you on your journey. I could eat many suppers on the tales you will spin.”

Raif bowed his head, unable to find words to reply.

The Listener took his leave, and Raif closed the door behind him. He found himself hesitating to seal the cracks around the doorframe, though he did not want to admit why. The sword lay on the stone bench; he picked it up and began to polish it with a scrap of skin. The raven watched him, wings tucked behind its back, mimicking the motion of a skater in time to Raif’s strokes. Raif balled the skin in his fist and threw it at the bird. He was beginning to hate the thing.

A sword, he learned, was poor company at night. He polished and waited, yet Sila did not return. He told himself it was for the best, but his body was restless with need and longing and dawn could not come too soon.

When morning finally came, he rose early and set off east in search of the Maimed Men.

EIGHT

The Thorn King

T
he forest south of Bludd was dark and ancient, with oaks slithery with moss and basswoods roped with ivy, and great white willows grown weak from the effort of surviving in stagnant water, eaten alive by spongy growths and rotting slowly from the roots up. Ruins stood here; a pale footstone half sunk into the loam, a section of standing wall protecting nothing but trees, a crumbling arch grown over with rapevines, a stretch of man-laid road running parallel to the path.

Bram noticed these things while most in the raid party did not. Or perhaps they saw but looked away; if a man had war and fighting on his mind it was better not to think too closely about those who had died before. Bram could not help himself, though. His brother said he had been born in the wrong place, and instead of being birthed amongst the thistle fields of Dhoone he should have been brought into the world in the Far South where a man could grow to be a warrior monk or a soldier scribe. Robbie Dhoone liked to tell men what they should be and where they should have been born, and although Bram was reluctant to admit it his brother was often right. Take their great-uncle, Skinner Dhoone. Robbie said the man should have been born on Topaz Island in the Warm Sea, where men owned slaves and kept concubines, for all Skinner was good for was controlling loose women and men in chains. Skinner had been furious when the insult had been relayed back to him, supposedly shaking so hard veins broke open in his face. In response he had named Robbie the Thorn King, claiming anyone who offered him loyalty would be torn to bloody shreds. Unfortunately for Skinner, Robbie had taken a liking to the name and had since claimed it for his own. And it hadn’t taken long for Skinner to realize the full breadth of his mistake: he’d been the first man alive to name Robbie Dun Dhoone a king.

Robbie, riding at the head of the line on his fine honey stallion, raised a fist and called a halt. Bram was torn between relief that he could rest at last and misquiet over making camp, however briefly, amid these quiet, twilit trees.

It was late in the day, and a red sun was sinking fast in the west. The sky was clear and it was bearably cold, without a wisp of wind to stir the thistles braided into the Dhoonesmen’s hair. A perfect night for a raid.
I shouldn’t be surprised
, Bram thought.
Even nature herself can’t help but be charmed by Robbie Dhoone.

Twelve days ago they had left Castlemilk and headed east toward Bludd. Sixty warriors and two women, war-dressed and battle-mounted (except for the elder woman whom everyone knew as Old Mother, and who stoutly refused to wear anything thicker than boiled wool, or ride anything taller than her white mule), they had skirted the pathways and forest lines of Haddo, Frees and Bludd. On the fifth day they had forded the Flow on horseback, not trusting any of the river crossings manned by Bludd-sworn clans. It had been an exercise that none except the warhounds enjoyed, for armor and weapons and heavy leathers had to be removed and floated across on makeshift rafts to prevent canker. Bram shivered to think of the coldness of the water rising against his thighs. This far east the Flow was a league wide, disturbed by strong underpulls and sucking pools, quite unlike the narrow stately river that flowed south of Dhoone.

“Bram! Robbie says you’re to attend him—and quickly.” The voice belonged to Guy Morloch, a Castlemilk swordsman lately come to Robbie’s cause. Like most of Robbie’s inner circle, he was handsomely mounted on a high-bred stallion and dressed in the finest cloths. Bram noticed that his cloak of heavy, felted wool had been newly fitted with thistle clasps. Turning his mount smartly, Guy headed back through the dry camp.

Bram hated to leave his horse without grooming, but he knew that Robbie wouldn’t suffer waiting gladly, so he tethered the sweet-natured gelding to a gorse brush and set off on foot for his brother’s tent.

All around, Dhoonesmen were preparing to sit out part of the night. No fires were to be lit, not this close to the Bluddhouse, and men had to content themselves with drawing their cloaks close and eating cold fare. The big ugly axman Duglas Oger had made himself comfortable on a fallen log and was inspecting the head of his ax. Other men were wetting their swords with tung oil, and reflections from the pure Dhoonish steel flickered coldly through the trees. Water steel, it was called, due to the shimmering waves of iron and blistered steel that ran beneath the metal’s surface like lake water.

Bram had once hoped to own such a blade himself, for his father had been the swordsman Mabb Cormac, and he had left two such swords for his sons upon his death. Robbie had been sixteen at the time, ten years older than Bram, and Bram thought that when his brother claimed both swords the night of Da’s deathwatch, he did so with the intention of giving one to Bram when he reached an age to use it. Bram was fifteen now . . . and still there was no sword.

“Damn you, Old Mother, go gentle with me! I swear you treat me worse than your mule!” Robbie Dhoone sat on a wooden camp stool outside the only tent in the camp, his legs stretched out in front of him, his booted feet resting upon an ale cask, offering up his face to an old woman brandishing a needle as thick as a nail.

As Bram looked on, the woman dredged the needle through the contents of her hip flask, causing a coat of bluish powder to cling to needle and thread. Unsmiling, she brought the needle close to Robbie’s eye and pierced the skin between his eyelid and brow. Blood welled. Robbie, knowing the attention of several of his companions was upon him, winked as if it hurt him not at all. Old Mother plunged the needle deep, depositing powder beneath his skin, making a mark that would last as long as Robbie Dhoone’s life.

The blue tattoos: no Dhoonesman could call himself a warrior without them. They took years, sometimes decades to finish, for no man could stand the pain longer than two or three strokes. Yet here was his brother, choosing to add to his warrior’s face in the middle of an armed camp, as calm as if he were being shaved, not stitched. Bram shuddered. He had received his first warrior’s mark at midwinter; the pain had kept him awake half a night.

“Bram.” Robbie finally noticed him. “Take a look at Oath’s hoof irons for me. I think he picked up a stone. You know he won’t give his hocks to anyone but you and Flock.”