A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2)

by J. V. Jones

  Bram could barely make sense of the words. He felt as if he’d been stabbed.

  Silently, he dismounted and formed the four mares into a team, checking their traces and collars. They were good horses, gentle and eager to snuffle Bram’s coat for treats. Bram spoke soft words to them, telling them that no, he had no treats but he’d find apples for them later if he could. It was a difficult task, positioning the four drafts ahead of the gelding. The drafts were massive creatures with deep chests and powerful shoulders, bred for pulling carts. Bram feared they’d pull him clean from the gelding’s saddle if he gave them an inch too much head. The gelding was wary of their closeness, twitching its tail and showing teeth.

  And then suddenly they were under way. Robbie’s cry came low and clear—“North to Bludd!”—and forty men and forty-four horses rode out from the clearing toward the Bluddhouse. Tack jingled, hooves thudded, and axes wielded in anticipation made snicking sounds as they cut air. Bram brought up the rear. The path was narrow, and he immediately regretted forming the drafts into double, rather than single file. Still, they were moving well enough, and there was little tension in the reins. He just wished he wasn’t falling behind so quickly. The main body of the party had already raced a quarter-league ahead.

  The forest was dark, fragrant with the odors of old trees. The loam beneath the horses’ hooves was rich and black beneath the top layer of snow. Bram felt sweat trickle along his neck. Holding the team made his shoulders ache, and he kept searching the darkness ahead for lights, hoping to spy the Bluddhouse.

  He saw the fire first, the barest glow above the trees, hardly brighter than starlight. Minutes passed, and then the cry came from ahead: “The Nail’s fired the wood!” Dhoonesmen cheered. Digging steel into horseflesh, the raid party quickened their pace.

  Other noises soon broke through the darkness: a horn blast, low and chilling, coming from due north. Gears whirred. Something monstrously heavy shook the earth as it moved, and then came the unmistakable rumble of many horsemen riding forth . . . to the east. Bluddsmen. Robbie’s luring them away.

  Bram felt for his earlier fear but found it gone. Robbie had killed it.

  Bram could smell the fire now, see the orange flames dancing high above the canopy. Armed men were on the move, calling instructions to each other in their thick Bluddish tongue. Bram could hear but not see them. The forest was thinning now, ancient sentinels giving way to man-planted maples, red pines, smoke trees and scarlet oaks—trees chosen for the blood-red foliage. Suddenly the path broadened and turned. And there, before him, rose the hideous bulk of the Bluddhouse.

  It was a massive, flaking cyst on the earth. A scab of stone, the brown-red color of dried blood, rising four storeys high and spreading immeasurably wide. Seeing it, seeing its total lack of symmetry and grace, its carbuncled outbuildings and blistered stonework, its strangely smoking gate towers and misshapen archers’ roosts protruding from its roundwall like sores, Bram knew why the Dog Lord wanted Dhoone. This place was not fit for a king.

  Mounted Bluddsmen in their dull plate, rough leathers and sable cloaks were racing across the roundhouse’s forecourt, heading east toward the fire raging in the sacred wood. Chaos reigned. Bram’s sharp eyes saw it all. Stablemen trotting out mounts tangled with armsmen bearing torches and youths bearing steel to the sworn men. Women were screaming, and a line of children and maids were running east with buckets and other vessels meant for filling with water and dousing flames. Someone, possibly the clan guide, was naming the Stone Gods in a high, wavering voice.

  Robbie’s done a good job surprising them, Bram thought, feeling an unfamiliar bitterness rising in his throat. It’s as if we’d torched the heart of their clan.

  Ahead, Robbie and his companions rode low in their saddles, water-steel and ax-iron drawn and moving. The woman warrior Thora Lamb hefted the hollow-tipped throwing spear she was known for, her cool gaze ranging ahead in search of game. Quietly, the war chant began, a drumbeat with two notes. Dun Dhoone! Dun Dhoone! DUN DHOONE!

  Realization of the trap rippled through the Bluddsmen like a cold wind. There was a moment when everything was still, when buckets hung suspended in mid-swing and smoke ceased to rise from the torches. And then the cry went up.

  “Close the gate!”

  Into the scrambling chaos of women, warriors, children and youths rode Robbie Dhoone and his forty men. Oath had pulled thirty paces ahead of the other horses and Robbie’s ax drew first blood. A yearman, poorly mounted on a sunk-backed pony, had one of his hands hacked off. Encouraged by the sight of spurting blood, the Dhoonesmen grew wild with fury, killing and slashing and riding men down. Duglas Oger rode through the lines of retreating Bluddsmen like a fallen god, savage and stinking, dealing death with his three-foot ax. Beside him rode Robbie Dun Dhoone, the Thorn King, fair as Duglas was dark, graceful as his companion was barbaric, his plate armor and great helm black and dripping, his braids whipping around him like golden chains. Together the two men drove the remaining Bluddsmen back as others in the party scattered women and children, axes and swords moving in and out of Bluddflesh to the rhythm of the Dhoonish chant. Dun Dhoone! Dun Dhoone! DUN DHOONE!

  Bram watched as a horse slid in a pool of gore, crushing its rider and breaking its own back. He felt a fine mist of blood spray across his face as Duglas took a man’s head, smelled human shit and urine and horse stale as men and beasts lost themselves to fear. Something close to relief overcame him when the Bludd Gate finally closed, its black iron hinges and pulleys straining as they swung two tons of iron-studded bloodwood back into its frame. Women and children and old men ran but did not make it, and as bars were shot home with the force of crossbolts firing, they threw themselves against the wood, scratching and pleading, tearing their nails.

  Duglas Oger slowed his ax swing and looked to his leader. Robbie pulled off his great helm to reveal a face red with exertion and stained bloody around the eyes. His braids were dark now, drenched with sweat. He seemed to wait until everyone, even the panicking Bluddsfolk, stilled, and then said in a clear voice, “No. Let no one say Robbie Dhoone kills innocent women and children like the Hail Wolf. Let them run free to the woods.”

  Duglas Oger nodded, grabbing a fistful of mane from his horse’s neck and using it to clean his ax. All around Dhoonesmen lowered their weapons and removed their helms, panting for breath.

  Wary relief spread through the crowd gathering at the Bludd Gate. One toothless old hag bobbed a curtsy to Robbie, calling him a clansman good and true. Impatient, Robbie waved her away. Slowly, the Bluddsfolk stepped clear of the gate, eyes down, arms around the shoulders of small children, buckets still in their hands.

  “No,” Robbie said suddenly, pointing to a red-haired boy of perhaps twelve. “He carries a sword—so is a man.”

  Duglas dealt the boy a clean blow with his newly shined ax, cleaving the youngster’s chest from shoulder blade to heart, crushing a dozen bones. A woman fainted. Children began to whimper. A group of maids broke free from the gate and ran screaming through the Dhoone ranks. Thora Lamb amused herself by cracking their knees with her spear. By the time the gateway was clear, five other corpses lay on the ground. Three more youths and two old men.

  An archer high up in one of the roosts began taking shots, and an arrow glanced off Robbie’s plate. “Come, men,” he said abruptly, turning his horse. “Let’s finish what we came here for. Bram! Bring the horses.”

  Bram obeyed the order, struggling to set all five horses into motion at once. The party moved west of the Bluddhouse, toward a series of outbuildings that lay clustered on the banks of a small stream. Robbie rode ahead of the group, searching. All the buildings looked the same to Bram—squat, red-stoned, hastily built with neither mortar nor chinking—yet Robbie came to a halt before one.

  The moon broke through the clouds as Robbie waited for his companions to draw abreast, and Bram saw that he had been wrong: not all the shanties were red-hued. This one was pale, built from blue-gray stone.
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br />   And then Bram knew what his brother meant to do.

  “Bram,” Robbie murmured, his voice dark with feeling. “Put the ropes on the horses and tear this thing down.”

  The Dhoone ranks parted to let Bram and the drafts through. Bram’s hands shook as he fastened the wrist-thick ropes to the mares’ harnesses, surprised by the strength of his emotion. All around, men had dismounted and were murmuring the names of the nine gods. Duglas Oger had tears in his dark eyes, and a fellow axman moved to lay a reassuring hand on the big man’s shoulders. Watching them, Bram was overcome with an aching love for his clan. How can Robbie not be chief after this? The sadness came slowly, as he walked around the little stone shanty, pulling rope through his fist. I no longer love him as I did.

  With his heart aching softly, Bram cracked the whip and set the four massive draft horses in motion, bringing down the building that the Dog Lord had raised thirty-five years ago from the rubble of the lost Dhoonestone.

  NINE

  A Broken Stone

  Raina Blackhail sat on the edge of the stone bed and bound her honey-brown hair. The tresses were soft and heavy, and the familiar movements of weaving the long braid calmed her. Dagro had always loved her hair. Unbind it for me, he had whispered, that first night in the barley field when they had come together as man and woman whilst his first wife lay dying in this very chamber. Norala had wished it, knowing her husband needed the comfort of a woman and wanting him to pick one worthy of being his new wife. Still, Norala had died a week later, earlier than expected and in terrible pain, and Raina knew it was the knowledge of their union that had killed her. Picking a new wife for your husband was one thing; living with the knowledge that the new pair were in love and well matched was another, and the anguish had been too much to bear.

  Sighing, Raina stood. It all seemed like a hundred years ago now, and she had been such a child. How could she ever have believed that the world was good, and that everyone within it wished her well?

  Thrusting sharp silver combs into her hair, she coiled her braid around her scalp. It wouldn’t do for her to be seen with it unbound or even hanging down her back in a single plait. She was chief’s wife, and there were many around her who were eager to find fault. Already the whispers had begun. Mace no longer sleeps in her chamber. Ayla Perch says she drove him out. Who can blame a man for looking elsewhere for favors his wife won’t grant?

  A hard little smile that Raina did not like on herself was showing when she looked in the glass. Always he twists and maneuvers, killing the truth. It was he who had walked out on their marriage bed. Mace, not her. Gods knew she had not loved it, but she had found her capacity for endurance was like a great hollow space inside herself, always able to swallow a little more. Now Mace had let it be known that she had turned cold and frigid, and had shut her door against him. Lies, all lies, but they sounded so much like the truth.

  And they weakened her position in the clan. The clanswomen were her backbone and support; she birthed their sons, taught their daughters how to be women, offered counsel when their marriages grew strained and mourning in times of grief. Always it was said of her that she was a good woman and a loyal wife. And now Mace Blackhail was taking that last thing from her.

  If you refused to share your bed with your husband, it meant you were no longer a loyal wife.

  She was too proud to deny it, for she would not speak aloud what others delighted to whisper, nor was she sure that such a denial would be believed. She had always been cool to Mace, and the women had doubtless observed this, as women always did, and the rumors would be easier to believe. After all, they would say, she’s never shown much love for him in the past. It was only a matter of time before she drew away.

  Frustrated, Raina tugged at the straw-filled mattress on the bed and began shaking some air into it. She really should make a new one, for this one had grown limp, and doubtless many small creatures had made their home within it, and it no longer cushioned her spine against the hardness of the stone bed.

  Stone, stone, stone. She was sick of Blackhail and its hardness; its dark oppressive roundhouse, and its corpses left to rot on open ground. Look at this chamber: stone bed, undressed-stone walls, stone flags worn thin where two thousand years of chiefs had stepped upon them. Where was the lightness and the music? Growing up in Dregg there had been dancing and mummery, the great hall gay with candlelight, the men with their kilts a-skirling, the women with sprigs of rosemary in their hair. Just to look at the walls made you glad; plastered smooth and painted umber, and swaddled in homespun fabrics they hardly looked like stone at all. Blackhail had ten times the wealth of Dregg, so why did it have none of its joy?

  Raina let the straw mattress drop to the bed. I am young yet, only thirty-three winters passed, yet why does this roundhouse make me old?

  It was a question she had no time for. Inigar Stoop had called her to the guidehouse, and she did not want to go yet knew she must. Already she had kept him waiting.

  Her chamber was located high on the western wall of the roundhouse, as far as it was possible to be from the guidestone and the guidehouse, and it seemed today that the walk was especially long and tiring. Some of the Scarpe women had set up a cook chamber in the old granary, where the damp had risen too sharply to continue storing grain. Raina smelled the sharp, unfamiliar scents of another clan’s cookery, and it made the gall rise in her. How do we stand it, this slow invasion by Scarpe? At that moment, she spied Anwyn Bird crossing the entrance hall on her way to the kitchen. She thought of stopping the older woman to ask her, but she noticed an unfamiliar stoop in the clan matron’s shoulders and too many loose hairs pulled free from her bun. She suffers too, Raina thought, and wondered what it must be like for Anwyn to have her clean, well-ordered domain taken over by strangers. You could fight and fight, but little was won in the end. Mace Blackhail would have his way.

  As she approached the narrow tunnel that led out to the guidehouse, Raina smoothed her dress and checked her boots for mud. Foolishness, but she could not help herself. There would be a battle here—she sensed it—and she had long learned to fight with whatever weapons she had at hand. Inigar would see her as chief’s wife, not some scared little maid he could bully and cajole.

  Pulling composure about her like a mask, she entered the Blackhail guidehouse.

  The cold struck her first, the sheer depth and deadness of it. How long ago had the freeze set in? Ten days? Surely now it was passed. Just yesterday she had watered Mercy at the Leak, and she was sure she had felt the first whiff of spring. Yet here, in the guidehouse, time seemed to have stopped at midwinter. Chilled, she rubbed her arms, wishing she had thought to bring a shawl.

  As her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, the massive bulk of the Hailstone emerged from the shadows like something conjured up from another world. Its bulk and power humbled her, and despite her best attempts to discipline her feelings she felt the old stirrings of awe.

  Then she saw the stone was steaming.

  Fear, instant and so concentrated she could taste the salt in it, leapt from her throat to her mouth. The Hailstone was steaming like a side of frozen meat.

  “Yes, Raina Blackhail. Eagle lores always know when to fear.”

  Startled by the clan guide’s voice, yet determined not to show it, Raina straightened the curve of her back and said, “How long has it been like this?”

  Inigar Stoop stepped free from the shadows and smoke. He has aged, she thought as the two regarded each other. The clan guide’s eyes were as black and hard as ever, but his body seemed shrunken and dry, sucked clean of blood. She tried not to show her shock, but Inigar Stoop was not an easy man to fool.

  “You find me changed, Raina?” he said, his voice as sharp as ever. “Then perhaps you should have come here before now.”

  She made no reply. I am chief’s wife and will offer no excuses to this man.

  He knew what she thinking, she was sure of it, and for a moment the two faced each other as adversaries: chief�
�s wife and clan guide, gazes locked and bristling. Then, abruptly, Inigar shrugged. Strangely, he pulled off the pigskin gloves he had been wearing and held them out toward her. “Take them. Touch the stone.”

  Annoyed that she had lost control of the situation, but also affected by the grimness in Inigar’s voice, she hesitated.

  He offered the gloves once more. “You cannot touch the stone without them. It would skin you.”

  How can it be? she wanted to ask. But she feared that question more than touching the stone, so she took the gloves from him and drew close to the guidestone’s eastern face. Cold breath rose from the monolith, making her teeth chatter like a little girl’s. This close she could see the living surface of the stone, the valleys and fissures and weeping holes. Normally it was damp and oozing, but now a frost covered it like scale. Wary, she reached out and laid gloved fingers upon it.

  Oh gods. It was like touching a dying man. Always when she had touched it before—at the end of her girlhood, after both her weddings, and Dagro’s death—its power had leapt toward her fingers like heat. Now it was cold and all power had withdrawn from the surface. She sensed it buried deep. As she took her hand away she felt a faint stirring, as if something reached toward her . . . but failed.

  The loss numbed her.

  Inigar Stoop stood silent, watching. After a time he said, “The gods send ice into the heart of the stone. It will shatter before the year’s out.”

  Raina touched her measure of guidestone, held in an embroidered pouch at her waist. She had heard the tales of guidestones cracking, but they had always seemed more like legends than truth. Quietly, she said, “The Eve of Breaking?”

  Inigar nodded. “The night Stanner Hawk sent a hound to the fire.”

  She bowed her head. It was too much to see the weight of knowledge on his face.