A Sword From Red Ice (74 page)

Gangaric kicked a loose chip of masonry with his
foot. Uncomfortable. He took a speaking breath, glanced at Drybone,
and then exhaled and didn't use it. Finally he blurted, "I would
rather we speak alone."

"Speak or I will break your ax arm."

For a long moment no one moved. The holes in the
centers of Gangaric's sky-blue eyes got bigger and blacker. All of
Vaylo's sons had grown up in fear of their father. The question was:
Had that fear gone? I am fifty-three, Vaylo thought. Am I capable of
beating my son?

It was a question he did not have to answer.
Jerking into motion, Gangaric cried, "Here then. If you force me
to say it. The Bluddhouse has turned into a stinking well. Quarro
grows fat and lazy—drinks ale all day and stays abed with
Trench whores. Calls himself chief, though not many call him it back.
He and his cronies are holed up in the house. Dun Dhoone's
garrisoning men at Wellhouse, spoiling for battle. What does Quarro
do? Decides to have a pit dug for bear baiting. A fucking bear pit.
With the Sull sneaking on our eastern bounds, the Trenchlanders
raiding our farms, and the Thorn King knocking on our door, he digs a
bear pit!" Gangaric was shaking so strongly, the limewood ax
handle was vibrating above his shoulder like a twanged string.
"Something needs to be done before it all goes to hell. I'm not
going back there. The place stinks worse than this."

Vaylo breathed in and out, and tried to recall why
he'd continued having sons after his first was born. Angarad had had
a hard time with the labor, and the mewling purple creature that had
been produced after three days did not seem worth the effort and the
risk. Quarro, she decided she would name it, after some grandfather's
grandfather who might have once worked in a quarry, or possessed only
a quarter of something vital—like a ball. Vaylo had not liked
him. Straightaway, he knew that. Little Quarro screamed like someone
was trying to skin him and shit like a sick dog. What was hard to
understand then was why he, Vaylo Bludd, had gone ahead and made six
more. For a certainty he should have stopped at two. That way
Gangaric HalfBludd, formerly Bludd, would not be standing there,
daring to accuse his father of inaction.

"Did Scunner Bone go to Withy?"
Questions seemed the best way to deal with his feelings. Firing them
off provided some relief.

"The Bone," Gangaric repeated with
annoying possessiveness and familiarity. "The old timer's still
at Bludd. What of it?"

Scunner Bone was an Otler-trained cowlman, a
handful of years older than Vaylo Bludd. Old-timer was an insult to
both of them. "Nothing of it. What are your numbers?"

"We're a dozen hatchets in all." Again,
there was that snide glance at Drybone, this one specifically aimed
at his sword. Hatchetmen—ax and hammer wielders—made no
secret of their contempt for narrow blades. Vaylo wondered if
Gangaric had ever had the pleasure of watching Drybone take off a
man's head. One sweep was all it took. Rather poetically he called it
moon upon the water. Aware that his thoughts were getting muddy,
Vaylo took a moment to pace the width of the war terrace. The bit of
sun that had sparkled earlier was gone, forced out by a conspiracy of
clouds. He imagined it must be cold, but could not feel it. "You
say Dun Dhoone's garrisoning men at the Wellhouse? Is he there
himself?"

"No. His second-in-command Duglas Oger
commands the crews."

That meant Robbie Dhoone himself would move to
take Withy . . . and possibly Ganmiddich. "Where are Blackhail's
armies?"

"They move southeast from Bannen."

It was, if you thought about it, a pretty steady
queue. Nearly everybody in the clanholds—including Drybone and
he himself—had possessed the Ganmiddich clanhold at some point
in the past seven months. Bludd had it now, Blackhail was aching to
retake it, and you could not rule out Dun Dhoone. The three giants of
the north, one small but exquisitely placed roundhouse: someone would
get crushed.

"There's a new Crab chief. He's housed at
Croser."

The politics of the clanholds could be
labyrinthine, Vaylo decided. Croser was an eccentric, self-possessed
clanhold that usually had the wisdom to avoid other people's fights.
"Married to one of the chief's daughters?" Vaylo ventured.

Gangaric actually grinned. "We reckon so."

Vaylo grinned back. Cluff Drybannock's face
remained still.

"How long will you stay?" Vaylo asked
his third son.

"Today and tomorrow if you'll permit it."

It was probably foolishness to be pleased by the
hesitancy in Gangaric's voice. It probably meant he was getting
softer as well as older. Just as he was about to give his son leave
to stay as long as he and his men saw fit, Cluff Drybannock spoke up.

"You say the Sull are on our borders. What is
their business?"

Vaylo felt a chill travel up his spine. He had not
thought to ask any questions of the Sull.

Gangaric regarded his fostered brother with some
suspicion, his eyes narrowing as he tried to find fault with the
question. "They're on the move. They use our paths, cross into
our territory at will. Hell's Town is teeming with them, the old
Sull. The pure Sull. They're leaving the Heart Fires and heading
north."

The wind picked up as Gangaric spoke, blowing hard
against their faces and breaking against the walls of the fort. One
of the massive copper sheets on the roof began to whumpf as air got
under it. The sound hammered at Vaylo's thoughts, made him think of
the things Drybone had told him in the tower. Terrible, believable
things.

"The Sull are not human," Ockish Bull
had told Vaylo the night thirty-five years ago after they'd
encountered the Sull army in the woods east of Cedarlode. "Remember
that and you will know something important." It hadn't seemed
like much of a statement at the time and Vaylo had thought Ockish was
being Ockish: inscrutable just for the sake of it. He should have
known better. The times when Ockish Bull was making the least sense
were the times when he spoke the hardest truths.

The silence created by Gangaric's words wore on,
gaining meaning. The Dog Lord knew he would have to be the one to
break it—Gangaric had the look of a man who'd fallen in a hole
and wasn't sure how to get out, and Drybone would not speak a
worthless word—yet he found it strangely difficult. Heartiness
was beyond him. He kept seeing the Field of Graves and Swords in his
mind's eye. Derek Blunt and his men dead.

Drybone standing at the north-facing window,
keeping watch. Vaylo looked from his flesh-and-blood son to the son
he had chosen, and realized he would soon have to make a choice.
Gangaric had not ridden hundreds of miles out of his way for a cozy
visit with Da.

"Come," Vaylo said to both his sons,
"let us go inside and get fed by Nan. We will all be Bluddsmen
this night."

Gangaric searched his father's eyes, and then
bowed his head with gallantry learned from the HalfBludds. "As
you wish." Vaylo imagined he was considering his crew of eleven
men.

Drybone observed this, his head level, his
nostrils moving as they drew in cool air. "Father," he said
quietly, "send Nan my respects. This warrior must keep the watch
tonight."

The old pain in Vaylo's heart deepened. Of course
Dry could not eat with Gangaric—the man had carelessly
mentioned Trench whores. Cluff Drybannock nodded a brief farewell to
Gangaric and moved inside the fort.

He took something essential with him. Vaylo felt
its loss, but could not put into words what it was.

Gangaric seemed relieved to have him gone. "I
forgot to tell you," he said, coming forward to escort his
father inside, "you are a grandfather again. Pengo's wife has
had the baby."

Shanna. Pengo had gotten her pregnant before his
first wife was slain, but Vaylo cared little of that. "Is it
healthy?" he asked, allowing his son to guide him through the
double doors.

"Aye. She sucks so much they call her
Milkweed."

Vaylo laughed, though in truth what he was feeling
was fear. Fear for Drybone, fear for his new granddaughter, fear for
all of Bludd. Milkweed. Quite suddenly he remembered the reason for
having more children. He had hoped to have a girl.

Yiselle No Knife

On the third day the land began to change. The
slopes south of the Rift grew greener as the grasses and heathers
were replaced with stone pines, blue cedar and hemlock. The hills
themselves shifted into rolling valleys, forested hummocks and ridges
and rocky bluffs. On the north side of the Rift the Craglands had
begun, and spear-shaped hunks of rock towered over dwarfed pines and
bushy black spruce. The Rift was perhaps fifty feet across now, and
if they had wanted to they could have climbed into it and made the
crossing to the clanholds. Boulders as big as barns, and entire dead
trees, complete with boughs and root balls, choked the crack.
Colonies of ptarmigan nested amid the rocks, and saxifrage and
lousewort grew in mats from the Rift's buckled walls. Raif wondered
what existed beneath the debris and boulders. Did the Rift still lead
to the abyss?

"That's Bludd territory over there,"
Addie said, wagging his chin south. "See that stand of big red
pines on the ridge, that's their marker. Anything east and south from
now on is theirs."

Raif had wondered about those trees. In a sea of
black, green and blue their rust-colored trunks stood out like a
warning. A pair of eagles had made their nest at the top of the
tallest pine, building a black ring around the point.

"How far to the Racklands?" Raif asked,
working out a sudden twinge of pain in his left shoulder.

The little fair-haired cragsman shrugged. "Depends
upon the path."

It was an uncharacteristically vague answer for
Addie Gunn, and Raif wondered if they had reached the edge of his
knowledge. The cragsman hailed from a Dhoone-sworn clan, and perhaps
he had avoided grazing his sheep in territory claimed by Bludd. Raif
glanced over at Addie. The cragsman had tied a band of rabbit fur
around his ears; it looked as if he was wearing a bandage. Goat
grease on his nose and lips made them shine. "Best keep moving,"
he said. "It's too cold to stop."

Raif followed him along the deer path that wound
between the rocks and shrunken pines. The snow underfoot wasn't deep,
but it was all ice and it did not yield to the foot. The temperature
had been dropping for the past two days—ever since the new
snow—and even though it was midday the air was still several
degrees below freezing. The Ice Trapper sealskins helped keep Raif
warm. Earlier he'd slathered his ears, nose, and lips with bow wax,
and imagined it made for an unlovely sight. Bow wax turned opaque
when it cooled.

Overhead the sky was a deep sapphire blue. Lines
of high serrated clouds moved from the north. Ice sparkled at ground
level, coating pine cones and sedge leaves, and the bases of the
limestone crags. They had been on the path at dawn and had not
stopped except to swig from their water bladders and pee. This was
the fourth day of traveling and Raif found he enjoyed the simple
hardness of camp life. It was good to go to bed each night bone-tired
and aching, and satisfying to hike onto a high ledge and see how far
you'd come in a day. The cold did not bother him much. Both he and
Addie were from northern clans; they were used to the shock of spring
frosts.

Addie was a fine traveling companion, able to
build fires, skin hares, find running water, sniff out eggs, follow
game tracks and cook. He had an eye for the simplest route. Natural
stairs leading up cliff faces, dry creekbeds, fallen logs spanning
gorges: the cragsman spied things that Raif would have missed. Every
evening since they had left the city, Addie had located a sheltered
place to camp, and every day he had found something worth bagging for
the pot. Last night he had brought down a fat brown rabbit and today
there had been more eggs. Raif was grateful for his presence. There
wasn't much talking between them, but silence was
different—better—when it was shared.

They had decided to continue east for another day
and then gradually move north from the Rift. Addie said the
Craglands appeared to ease to the north and they would need to do
less climbing. He did not question Raif's destination, and that
seemed no small blessing. In his former life Addie Gunn had kept a
herd of sheep on the move in the highlands only staying in one place
during spring lambing. He was a man who didn't need to know where he
was going to spend the next night.

Raif did not give much though to the Red Ice.
East, Thomas Argola had said. That was all, but it was also enough.
It made things simple. They would head more or less east, switching
directions as the land dictated, and see what they could find. If
Tallal of the lamb brothers was right and a great battle had taken
place in the Valley of Cold Mists then some evidence somewhere must
exist.

Glancing north, Raif wondered where the lamb
brothers were this day. Were they in the Want drifting east?

"Some smoke ahead." Addie's voice seemed
to come from a great distance. A pause followed while the cragsman
figured the ways. "We could turn north now. Rock's looking a
mite splintery but if we keep our feet lively we'll manage."

Raif could neither smell nor see smoke, but he did
not doubt Addie's word. The cragsman slowed his pace as he waited for
instruction. Breath ice caught in his eyebrows had frozen previously
invisible hairs, rendering them white. "It would," he said,
"be timely to do a spot of trade for some tea."

Surprised by this, Raif took a moment to sort his
thoughts. He had assumed Addie would feel the same way he did, and
want to avoid encounters with strangers. Yet how would they learn
anything without speaking to people? Was Addie gently pushing him
forward, forcing him to hold true to his oath? Raif puffed air
through his lips. Maybe he just wanted tea.