A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2) (60 page)

Wrayan Castlemilk’s manner was still cool, but Bram could see the light of desire in her eyes. That armor had been made for a queen. And not for any queen, but for the great Weeping Moira herself. She had fought in it a thousand years earlier at the Hill of Flies, and clan no longer knew the art of honeycombing metal so that it was light of weight but hard as stone.

But still Robbie wasn’t finished. The last basket was long and shallow, so heavy that to move it Bram had been forced to drag it across the Brume Hall floor. Robbie paused before slitting the cloth that covered it, and addressed the seven warriors who protected Wrayan Castlemilk.

“I have offered gifts to your clanwives, your healers, your old men, and your chief. And now I offer the gift of swords to you.”

Robbie slit and pulled back the canvas, revealing a stash of twenty swords, unsheathed and laid point-to-hilt. Their edges rippled, throwing off sparks of blue light. Every man in the room grew still. Water steel. Dhoone Kings wielded it, warriors had killed for it, and only one man in the clanholds knew the secret of its forging.

Bram stared at the swords, transfixed. He did not understand how Robbie had managed to lay his hands on so many. No man who owned one would willingly give it up. And then he saw it, close to the top of the pile, the pommel shaped like a rabbit’s foot, cast from lattern and blued steel. His father’s sword. The one Mabb Cormac had ordered refitted to honor his second wife, Margret. Twin to the blade that Robbie now held in his fist. Bram blinked. That sword was
his
.

“I see the rumors are true, then,” Wrayan said to Robbie. “You
did
relieve Skinner of some of his war chests when you fled his camp.”

Robbie shrugged. “I prefer to call it taking what’s rightfully mine.”

Wrayan laughed, but this time her laughter was brittle and quickly done. She glanced at her warriors; their attention was still rapt upon the swords. “You’ve brought some pleasing trinkets, I’ll allow you that much.”

“Water steel is no trinket, lady.”

“What is easily acquired is easily given.”

“Then you refuse them?” Robbie’s voice was dangerously light.

“No. I’ll accept them. But I want something more.”

“Lady, I have no more riches to give. If you would only—”

Wrayan waved a hand to silence him. “Spare me your protests. Another sword means nothing to me.”

“Then what would you have?”

As Bram waited for Wrayan to speak, he was taken with the idea that everything had been leading to this. Robbie was clever, but this was his first time at the negotiating table, whilst Wrayan Castlemilk had been striking deals for thirty years. Outside, the moon shone through a thin veil of cloud, making the entire dome glow. Its light was cold and alien, and everyone sitting beneath it looked made of stone. Bram shivered, though instantly he wished he had not, for the Milk chief’s gaze fell upon him.

“I’ll take your brother, Robbie Dun Dhoone, to foster here at this clan.”

TWENTY-NINE

The Robber Chief

I
was strange, the way the snow here seemed to hold no water, just crystals of parched ice. Raif felt it crunch beneath his boots like chalk as he walked the length of rimrock, waiting for midnight to fall.

The Rift Music had started, and hundreds of fires blazed against it, one at the entrance to every inhabited cave in the city. With so many fires burning it should have been light, but it wasn’t. The Rift vented darkness like a volcano venting steam. Raif grinned at his own fancy. Mostly he felt old inside, as if the things he’d seen and done had aged him, but tonight he felt strangely light. Mad. Lost. Addie’s song had revealed a path for him, and he knew he wasn’t fit to take it. But if he didn’t, who would?

Raif knew the answer—he could hear in the Rift Music.

No one.

Sobered, he turned away from the rim, and let the dry smoky air cool him until he felt ready to face the Robber Chief, Traggis Mole.

Raif had never been close to the chief’s cave before, but he knew where it was. Most Maimed Men chose to live in the upper terraces, closer to the sun and stars, yet Traggis Mole had made his home low. The lower terraces were the oldest part of the city, and the walls and stairs were roughly mined and crumbling. Bird lime had bleached the outcroppings, and some trace of phosphorescence made random edges glow. Raif followed a stairway where the stone steps were so badly deteriorated that oak boards had been laid over the powdery rock. Below, he could see the ten-foot longfire that burned at the mouth of the chief’s cave.

No one stood guard by the entrance, and as Raif crossed the ledge toward the fire he wondered what he should do. The longfire was burning fiercely, completely sealing off the mouth of the cave. Glare from the flames prevented him from seeing inside. Just as he was about to call out, a flagstone was thrown over the coals, flattening a section of the flames and creating a narrow bridge through the center of the fire. Raif moved forward. He still couldn’t see beyond the flames, but the message was clear.
Enter.

He stepped onto the flagstone, hearing coals pop beneath him. For a moment his ears roared with heat and he smelled the singeing of his own hair, and then he was safe on the other side. Quickly, he ran a hand over his scalp, checking that he wasn’t actually on fire. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a shape move inside the cave.

“It’s a true Orrl cloak, then,” came Traggis Mole’s rough, quiet voice. “The flames touched it, but it didn’t char.”

Raif was angry at being watched. He made no reply, using the few moments this bought him to take in his surroundings. The chief’s cave was narrow and twisting, its gallery sloping downward, boring deep into the cliff. The walls were painted, and Raif could see traces of color peaking through the scale of soot and lichen that coated the rock. Crosscurrents touched his face, and he realized that the chief’s cave must lead to other caves and tunnels that he could not see. The living quarters were sparse and orderly. A pallet bed was pushed against a flat stretch of rock wall, its fur coverlet pulled straight. A second fur lay on the floor, close to a cast-iron brazier and two leather camp chairs. A hogbacked chest stood at the foot of the bed, and a weapons stand holding both live and guarded steel stood at its head.

“Step aside,” Traggis Mole commanded.

The moment Raif did so, Traggis Mole tugged on a length of rope, dragging the flagstone off the coals. Flames leapt up immediately, blocking the way in. And out.

The Robber Chief moved close to Raif, and sniffed him. The bore holes in his wooden nose made a sharp little piping noise as he inhaled. He was dressed richly but with little regard, like Orwin Shanks at the Dhoone Fair: aware that he must display his wealth, but careless of how he went about it. Raif recognized the finery of several clans on his back. The heavily embroidered tunic was pure Wellhouse, its design picked out in all the colors that heather could be. The double-woven cloak trimmed with swan feathers had once belonged to a Harkness warrior, and the hare-skin pants were the type made by the Hailwives each summer when the hares ran wild in the Wedge. Other items—tooled leather boots, a metalwork sword belt, and a linen undershirt gathered at the neck and cuffs—were city-made and foreign to Raif.

“Not all Orrl cloaks are created equal,” Traggis Mole said, his black eyes looking steadily at Raif. “Only a very few are proofed against flames. Cloaks made for chiefs and the sons of chiefs. But then, you know all about that.”

Raif held the Robber Chief’s gaze and did not speak.

Traggis Mole’s finely shaped lips curled, then he was gone. Raif saw him settle down on one of the camp chairs, and wondered how he moved so fast.

“How old are you?” the Robber Chief asked.

“I passed my eighteenth name-day this winter.”

“When?”

It was a question Raif didn’t want to answer . . . because he’d never be entirely sure. “Recently.”

Traggis Mole let the silence lie there until Raif felt compelled to fill it.

“Da always said I was born on Lambing Night, in the last month of winter. But when I was a bairn I remember my mother celebrating my name-day earlier, at Winter Fest.”

As soon as Raif spoke he regretted it. Never before had he mentioned this to anyone, not even to Drey. He’d always used the day Tem had given. But even a child of four can remember things, and he distinctly recalled his mother giving him a tiny wooden boat to sail on the Leak. It was at Winter Fest, he knew, for as he watched his toy boat bob along the icy stream, he remembered the clan maids in their winter whites, singing to lone, pleading with the Stone Goddess to find them a mate before Lambing Night.

Traggis Mole sat perfectly still, watching him. Raif was aware of the man’s power, the potential for absolute violence that charged his body like a drawn bow.

“The Vorlanders say that if you lose an eye in battle it is a good thing, for that eye will go ahead of you to heaven and will send you glimpses of other worlds. Me, I lost a nose, and I’ve come to believe that if I sniff very hard I can scent a lie.” The Robber Chief paused, gauging Raif’s reaction. “Now I will ask you one question, and if you lie to me I will kill you. Do you understand?”

Raif nodded slowly. He feared this man.

The Robber Chief waited, choosing his moment before speaking. His eyes were black as night, and you could not see his soul through them. “The Orrl cloak. Did you kill the man who owned it?”

The question was so surprising it took Raif a moment to make sense of it. The Orrl cloak? He met Traggis Mole’s gaze. “No.”

Time passed, how much Raif was unable to tell. Everything was still and quiet, except the breath piping in and out of the Robber Chief’s wooden nose. Suddenly he moved, stood and crossed toward the weapon stand. Again there was that quickness, as if Traggis Mole knew a way to shrink space. “So how did you come by it?”

Raif hoped his relief didn’t show. “I took it from a dead man’s back. I came across five bodies in the wastelands west of Orrl. I needed clothes.” He wasn’t proud of it, but Traggis Mole had asked for the truth.

“And did you know who they were?”

“No. Orrlsmen, nothing more.”

“Then you’d be surprised to learn that one of them was grandson to an old friend of mine, Spynie Orrl?”

Raif shook his head, knowing he’d fallen into a trap.

The Robber Chief selected a sheathed longknife from the weapon stand. “You’re not what you claim, are you, Raif Twelve Kill? Not a white-winter warrior, not even an Orrlsman.”

“No.”

The word stilled the Robber Chief’s hand. He looked from the longknife to Raif. “Linden Moodie says you’re a Hailsman. Is he right?”

Raif felt sweat prickle along his hairline. “Yes.”

Immediately Traggis Mole was there, at his back, the longknife drawn from its sheath, its point touching the apple of Raif’s throat. “Who are you protecting, yourself or your clan?”

The pressure of the knife made Raif gag. He didn’t understand any of this. What did Traggis Mole want from him? “I—I don’t know.”

Just as quickly as the knife was raised, it was taken back. The Robber Chief released him, and Raif stumbled forward, his hand rising to his throat. His fingers slid across wetness, and whatever it was—sweat or blood—he wiped it away without looking at it.

Traggis leaned against the cave wall and studied him. The longknife was sheathed once more, and only its tortoiseshell grip now showed. “Linden Moodie says you endangered the raid party by letting a sheep herder run free.”

“He says a lot. Not all of it’s true. The sheep herder was gagged and tied. He was in no state to give warning.”

The Robber Chief accepted this with a taut nod. “What if he’d been a Hailsman?”

Suddenly Raif needed to sit. Being in Traggis Mole’s presence drained him. He felt as if he’d been awake, guarding against monsters, all night. Without waiting for an invitation Raif sat on the closest camp chair. “I can’t answer that.”

“Well, you’re going to have to. Here, for me.” Traggis Mole pushed himself off from the cave wall. “This is the Rift, not the clanholds, and you’re with the Maimed Men now. The journey is one-way. No one goes back. We can’t. We might wish it, might dream about it every night, tasting the warm buttermilk on our tongues and feeling the spring grasses whip our shins. But we know it’s just a dream. We’re marked, every one of us. And no one’s pining our loss.”

As Traggis finished speaking a tremor passed through the cave. Rock settled deep in the earth’s crust with a long, bass groan. Flames in the longfire and brazier
greened
as gas escaped through fault lines. Dust smoked from the cave walls in the stillness that followed.

The Robber Chief pulled his wooden a nose a fraction away from his face, letting air travel directly into the bridgeless hole beneath. His eyes dared Raif to look away. When the dust thinned he plugged his wooden nose back into place.

“This may be a rotting wormhole, but I’m king of it. That might not mean much to you, with your fancy cloak and clannish honor, but it’s everything to me. Men stay here at my sufferance.
You
’re here at my sufferance, and I tell you now, Twelve Kill, I don’t like what I see. Oh, I know you’re handy with that bow of yours and you’ve a talent for coming out on top, but to me you’re a liability—a man whose loyalty still lies with his clan.”

Traggis Mole’s small well-shaped hands twitched, as if they wanted something to do. His gaze pinned Raif. “Many men here hate me. Some think they can take my place. That’s fine with me—I can watch my back. But not everyone can. There are fools here who still trust men, fools like Addie Gunn and Stillborn and a hundred others like them. And perhaps they should never have come here, perhaps they should have stayed in their roundhouses and cities and taken whatever tyranny came their way. But they didn’t, they came here. And that makes them mine.

“And no one harms what is mine, only me.”

Raif looked down; his boots were covered in a film of dust. He understood now what the Robber Chief wanted from him, but he didn’t know if he could give it.