A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2)

by J. V. Jones

  After a time Druss appeared to reach a decision and headed back toward the wagon. Effie heard him give a high-pitched whistle to summon Clewis from the trees.

  Quickly, she gathered up the breakfast things and the ground tarp and hauled them to the back of the wagon. Then she returned and set her attention to the fire. Should she put it out or shouldn’t she? Would they be traveling downriver or staying put?

  Druss told her nothing, but it didn’t look good. Fresh mud had splashed over the crown of his boots. “Fed the horses their mash yet?” he snapped.

  She nodded. No one was going to catch Effie Sevrance not doing her fair share.

  “And the scrape on Boe’s heel?”

  “Done.” It had been a keen disappointment to learn that the two matched ponies who pulled the cart weren’t named Killer and Outlaw after all, but rather Jigger and Boe.

  Druss Ganlow grunted. He tried to think of some other way to catch her slacking, but couldn’t come up with one, and settled on grunting some more. The damp air had turned his hair into pale wisps, and he reminded Effie of a plump and disgruntled baby. His skin was smooth and he had fat-apple cheeks, and if it hadn’t been for his sharp green eyes his expression might have been jovial. He hailed Clewis as the Orrlsman approached, and walked forward a few paces to meet him.

  “Any trouble?” he asked.

  Clewis Reed shook his head. He had his green antler bow in his fist and was wearing the long, narrow Orrl cloak that somehow drew its color from the sky and surrounding landscape. Today it looked a sort of pale dove-gray. Which was funny, because when Effie’d first seen it in Blackhail she could have sworn it was almost white. He said, “Are we off, then?”

  “Mud’s bad. The rain flushed out the last of the snow.”

  “We’ve been here four days. That’s too long, especially with a fire burning to mark our place.”

  Druss nodded reluctantly. He always deferred to the Orrlsman on matters of safety. “We’ll give it a go. See how the road lies.”

  Effie found her hand had gone to her lore as the men spoke. The little chunk of granite had shifted against her chest. It didn’t feel like a bad thing, not a warning exactly, more an affirmation of what Clewis said. Best to be on the road. Away. Quickly she looked at the stand of fire pines that marked the forest border, knowing as she did so that a man more experienced than her had just been doing the very same thing and had pronounced it safe. She saw nothing, and forced her mind to other things. The fire needed to be snuffed.

  They worked as a team to get the wagon ready and the horses hitched. When Effie had completed her tasks she found she had a few spare minutes outside while Druss secured the load and Clewis Reed stretched a line of damp arrows beneath the canvas to dry. Careful not to stray too far from the wagon, she circled the perimeter of the camp, kicking up mud, squashing down hot ashes and horsepats: concealing signs of their occupation. It was just a precaution, she told herself. Nothing more.

  When the wagon finally shuddered into motion an entire flock of wood ducks took off in fright. Watching them through the canvas flap, Effie took their flight as a sign. You knew you’d been somewhere too long when the ducks had mistaken your wagon for a landmark and were shocked when it started to move.

  The going was slow. Runoff had turned the road into mud. The wagon would lurch forward, rock to a halt as the mud sucked at the wheels, roll back a bit and then move forward once more as Druss cracked his whip.

  Clewis had chosen to sit up front with Druss on the driver’s seat, his braced bow lying across both men’s laps. He was worried about his arrows, Effie could tell. In stormy weather the damp got into them no matter what you did to protect them, and a damp arrow had to be dried delicately. Clewis said it was better to shoot with a damp arrow than with one that had been warped by too much heat. Damp meant loss of power. Warped meant loss of accuracy. It wasn’t a hard choice. The bow was different, he explained: that was waxed and glazed.

  Effie had thought about this for a moment, and then asked, “Why don’t you wax your arrow shafts, then?”

  Clewis had looked at her for a very long time, his old dignified face perfectly still, and then had replied in a pondering voice, “Do you know, I don’t believe anyone’s thought of that before.”

  Effie had been stupidly pleased. She grinned now, just thinking about it, letting her imagination spin out a life where she passed from swordsman to hammerman, from woodsman to stone mason, from pig farmer to head cook, making insightful observations on their crafts. Effie the Wise. Effie of the Keen Eye. Deep Horse-Sense Effie. That made her giggle out loud, and she had a picture of herself wearing a horse’s head and wandering from clan to clan. Perhaps Anwyn could make her one, once she told the clan matron how to vastly improve the texture of her bannock and brown buns.

  Once she’d started giggling she couldn’t stop. Anwyn would kill her. The hammerman would kill her. She’d have to be Effie of the Fleet Foot before she even thought of being wise.

  As she hugged her sore stomach, her lore jumped. It was such a deliberate movement, an actual moving away from her skin and then a dropping back, that it made a knocking sound as it hit her breastbone.

  Effie felt her skin tighten all at once. She stood, and then was immediately thrown back into her seat by the wagon lurching to a halt. As she stood a second time she felt the wagon list as its front wheels sank deep into the mud.

  “Clewis!” she cried. “Clewis!”

  He turned to look at her through the break in the canvas behind the driver’s seat. “Everything’s fine, Effie. We’re just stuck in the mud.”

  She shook her head at him. “No. No.”

  Druss spun around. “Effie. Stop your jabbering. There’s work to be done here.” With that, he pushed himself off from the driver’s seat and landed in the mud.

  Clewis Reed looked at her a long moment, his pale eyes making a judgment. After a few seconds he nodded once, gravely, terribly, and then went to join Druss to inspect the damage.

  Effie dashed to the back of the wagon to check the trees. They’d only traveled a few leagues, and the terrain had not changed much. The tree line had crept nearer to the river bank, and the river cliffs were lower and had broken down into flaky banks of slate. She looked hard but could see no movement in the trees.

  Unable to bear it any longer, Effie pushed the wagon flap open and stepped out.

  Clewis and Druss were standing by the right front wheel. Druss was looking down, hands on hips, shaking his head. The wheel had sunk a full foot and a half into the mud. Clewis was not looking at the wheel. His gaze was on the trees. He held his long, elegant bow in his left hand, his bracing hand, and there was tension in his callused fingers. There was an arrow in his right fist, and his arrow case was mounted high on his back, level with his left shoulder, so that the flights of his arrows brushed against his silvery hair. Ease of draw. Effie had grown up around enough bowmen to know that.

  Without looking at her, he said, “Effie, we’re going to need plenty of rocks to sink into the mud above the wheel. Why don’t you head down the cliff to the water’s edge and collect some? The best slate’s to be had there.”

  “Water’s edge!” Druss exclaimed. “There’s rocks enough on top.”

  “Then fetch them,” Clewis replied with absolute calm. “Effie has her task. You have yours.”

  Druss Ganlow’s green eyes looked from Clewis to Effie and back, picking up the thread of tension between them. Effie saw him take in the exact same things as she had done seconds earlier: Clewis’s fingers, his arrow, his bow.

  Abruptly, he nodded. “We’ll be out of here in a quarter. Don’t stray too far, girl. I want you back the minute you’re called.”

  Effie held his green-eyed gaze for half a moment, nodded, and then he was gone. She saw him draw his longknife as he walked away.

  “Go on, Effie,” Clewis said to her when Druss was out of earshot. “Go and pick some slate and watch the harlequins. If you keep your head very low and stay v
ery still they’ll come to you. Remember that. Low and still.”

  Effie’s throat began to ache. Both of them: one man she hadn’t liked very much and one she suddenly realized she cared for deeply were making sure she was safe. She couldn’t speak, knew she didn’t dare speak. Clewis Reed was from a different age. His beard, his hair, the style of his cloak were unchanged from the time of the River Wars. He was a man of dignity. And she suddenly knew what she must do.

  She bowed to him, inclining her head and neck from a point in her upper spine. Like the maidens of Clan Orrl.

  As Clewis watched her a quiet sadness passed over his face. He bowed back to her deeply, from the waist. “Lady.”

  She turned then. If she had not she would have failed him. And she did not want to fail Clewis Reed. She wanted very much to be worthy of him.

  The climb down to the river passed in a blur. Effie’s body worked independently of her mind, her feet choosing ledges of their own accord and her hands dutifully following. Even as she reached the water’s edge and the first frothy wave lapped across the bridge of her boot, she heard the unmistakable thunder of hooves.

  Druss shouted something. One of the wagon horses, either Jigger or Boe, whinnied nervously and pulled against his hitch. Effie strained to hear more, cursing the river for its noise. Her stupid body was shaking uncontrollably. Spray gusted over her in a wet slap, instantly soaking her cloak and dress. The drumming of hooves had altered its pattern, changing from a unified gallop into many separate beats. Effie saw what was happening in her mind’s eye: the raiders had broken free of the trees and reached the river strand, and were now spreading wide to flank the wagon. Clewis would be standing there, close to the sunken wheel, his bow drawn, choosing his target.

  He is calm, for a bowman must always be calm. His arrows are damp, and this means that he must delay release of the string. He waits for the perfect moment. Thuc. One of the raiders down. That makes some of the raiders rein in their mounts. They had not counted on a master bowman. Even as they reevaluate the old man by the wagon, Clewis picks off another member of their company. This angers the head raider, a pale-skinned man with a half-moon ax.

  With cold, pale eyes he watches as Clewis picks another target, waits until Clewis’s gaze and attention are fully focused upon that one man, before galloping forward with breathtaking speed and chopping off Clewis’s head.

  Blood, so much blood, pumping more powerfully than the river. The pale man with the half-moon ax smirks, even as he and his horse are sprayed with blood. He makes the mistake of letting his ax rest, for he cannot see behind the wagon where Druss Ganlow waits with his longknife. Just as the pale man had chosen his moment, Druss Ganlow chooses his. The pale man turns his horse to hail his company and accept their accolades—and that is when Druss Ganlow strikes.

  Even from here Effie hears his call.

  BLACKHAIL!

  The pale man reads the danger in the eyes of his companions, but he is too late. The knife slides in, through the ribs, through the left lung, through the diaphragm to the spleen. The pale man twists in the saddle, gasping, surprised. He is a Dhoonesman, Effie realizes quite suddenly. And Druss looks at him and smiles.

  “We are Blackhail, first amongst clans. And we will not cower and we will not hide. And we will have our revenge.”

  Those are Druss’s last words, and as the remaining company of Dhoonesmen descend upon him and cut him apart, Effie thinks, I must live to tell his tale to my clan.

  So she clings to the rocks and bears witness, and the river that should feel cold warms her as the harlequins speed by.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Racklands

  “Today we enter the Racklands,” Ark had said as they broke camp that morning, yet as the day wore on Ash could detect little change in the forest. It was alive here, that much she knew, for she’d heard streams bubbling and loons calling, and the deep-belly groans of blue bears. Somehow over the past seven days the Deadwoods had turned into livewoods, and Ash was inclined to believe that their life had a lot to do with their distance from the Want.

  Snow was still on the ground here, a crisp white blanket littered with pine needles and cones. When the horses’ hooves cracked it, they punched perfect holes that held their edge. Overhead the sky was a brilliant late-winter blue. A horned moon showed low in the south, so pale that you had to look for it. The sun was up and rising, its warmth nearly undetectable by Ash but sufficient to coax the sharp scent of resin from the pines.

  It was, Ash thought, the most beautiful day she could remember since passing through the clanholds with Raif.

  Raif. She had no sense of him, she realized with a small shock. No sense that he was out there, living any sort of life.

  Breathing deeply, she filled her lungs with cold, sparkling air, held it for a moment, and then let it and Raif go. She was Sull now.

  As the morning wore on the forest floor began to rise. Ash spotted a stand of silver firs on a ridgetop, giant trees as tall as thirty men, with their boughs spreading as wide as buildings. Other trees began to appear—blue spruce and lacebark pine and white hemlock—and gradually the colors of the forest changed from browns and greens to cool silvery blues. When a needle creek cut across their path, Ark and Mal dismounted. Both men stripped off their heavy gloves, knelt on the creek bank and splashed water over their faces. We’re here, Ash thought, sensing some shift in their beings that she could put no name to. We’re in land held by the Sull.

  She jumped from her horse and led it to drink. The earth felt solid beneath her booted feet. The creek carried a little breeze with it, and Ash let it lift the hair from her shoulders and cool the riding blisters on her palms. Below her, the water ran so perfectly clear that she could count the rocks on the creekbed. It was good to be here.

  The creek was only a few feet wide, and Ash was suddenly determined to jump it. So she did just that, taking a little run and landing in the hackled snow on the other side. The horses looked at her as if she were mad. Ark Veinsplitter frowned, maintaining his dignity. Mal Naysayer put a foot to the stirrup, mounted the blue and, after trotting the stallion back a few paces, he jumped the creek on horseback. He didn’t once crack a smile, but there was crinkling around his ice-blue eyes.

  Turning to look at his hass, he said, “There is no shame in wading if you are afraid.”

  Ash pushed her lips together to stop herself from giggling. Ark stood on the far bank and frowned at them. Unhurriedly, he turned to Ash’s white and slapped it firmly on the rump, directing the horse across the creek. He did the same with his gray, and then—bunching his great wolverine cloak in his fists until it was raised as high as the tops of his boots—he waded solemnly across the creek.

  “My feet are much cooled,” was the only thing he said to them before mounting his horse.

  He made them ride like fiends to catch up with him.

  Ash’s jaw ached from grinning by the time they slowed. She was out of breath—and the less she thought about her saddle sores the better—but she was perfectly content. These were her men. And she would ride with them forever if they would let her.

  Yet she had made no move to help Ark when he’d been driven to his knees by the maeraith. Ash glanced at Ark’s left wrist, and felt her good spirits float away. He had not yet pulled his gloves back on, and the bandage showed. She had wound it herself this morning, boiling strips torn from her linen shift to use as dressing. The strips had been spotless five hours ago, but now there was a dark stain on the cloth over the cut. She worried about that. The Naysayer had taken some gashes, but they were shallow and the skin was already knitting together as it healed. Ark had taken a cut to the head of his ulna where it met his wrist. Bone had been exposed. Ark shrugged it off. His hand was stiff but he used it. If there had been a loss of articulation he covered it. Yet he couldn’t cover the dark fluid leaking from the unhealed cut, and Mal Naysayer couldn’t cover the fact that he had refused to stitch it. Ash knew of only two reasons why a surgeon would not clo
se a wound—infection, or bone fragments lodged in the flesh—and neither eased her mind.

  Yet Ark’s spirits seemed good, especially since they had crossed the border into the Racklands. Ash thought of asking him about the wound, but decided to wait until later. She didn’t want to break the mood.

  Pulling alongside him, she asked, “Will we see Sull settlements soon?”

  He shook his head. “We travel the northern forests, and some amongst us make homes along the Greenwater and Innerway to the north, and others still live in remote places we will not pass, but no Sull lives in this land. We claim and defend it, but others who are not wholly Sull make homes here.”

  Hearing the censure in his voice, she said, “Trenchlanders?”

  “It is so.” He held his head perfectly level and continued to look straight ahead. She thought he wouldn’t say any more, but after a moment he continued. “In a few days we will pass into the lowlands they are named for. The earth is soft there, and the river clan name the Flow has changed its course many times. All the ancient course changes may still be read in the land, and from Hell’s Town one may look upon them. Some hold they look like trenches.”

  Somehow this offended Ark’s pride, but Ash wasn’t sure why. She made an adjustment to the reins to guide the white around a thick hump of rootwood poking through the snow. “What do you think they look like?”

  “The Sull named the lowlands Glor Arakii, Land of Changing Rivers.”

  Here it was, the source of his pride. The Sull had named the land one thing, yet the Trenchlanders had moved in and named it something else. “And the Flow?”

  Ark sat his horse stiffly. “The Sull named it Kith Masaeri, River of Many Ways.”

  They had names for all the lands they’d passed through between here and the Storm Margin, she realized. It had all been theirs, the entire Northern Territories, and now they had only the Racklands left. She didn’t understand how they had lost so much. Everyone in the city holds and clanholds feared them. She had seen with her own eyes how fiercely they fought, how they had knowledge and equipment superior to that of any other people in the North. Their horses, their swords, their very strength and stamina were unmatched. Yet somehow they had been losing ground for centuries—longer, even. Thousands upon thousands of years.