A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2)

by J. V. Jones

  Raif could hardly believe it was happening. Seventeen days west and he was here, where he had never thought to return. Ride five days southwest at a fair pace and he’d be back at the roundhouse, back with Effie and Drey and Corbie and Anwyn, and Bitty and all of the Shanks.

  Home, he mouthed, feeling nothing.

  He knew these hills, knew how the wind scoured anything that dared grow higher than a stalk of heather, knew where to look to find springs and old mine shafts, and the best place to flush out rabbits. He had taken down his first major kill not far from here: a big lone moose that had strayed south. Abruptly, he turned his mind to the arrangement of the camp. Some instinct involved with preserving his sanity warned him to do, not think.

  They were not far from Dhoone here, but already the Copper Hills had deflated into the humps and bluffs of the balds. Five days earlier they had made the crossing from the badlands into the clanholds. The weather had been with them, and in a way so had the clanwars. They had met no hunters on the road. The stout ponies favored by the Maimed Men were not bred for speed, and once they were past the worst of canyon country the journey had been almost restful. The lengthening days of spring and the clear weather meant they’d easily made up for days lost during the storm. The moon had shrunk a bit every night and now there was nothing of it left.

  Tonight would be completely dark.

  Raif bandaged his pony’s hocks. The poor creature had just missed going over the cliff in the landslide, and its legs had been cut up by rocks. It threw a kick, and Raif dodged it. At least he still had a mount. Stillborn’s gentle black mare had been lost, along with the three packhorses and the gear they’d been hauling. Now they were eleven men and ten mounts. Few were happy about this, especially Addie and the outlander, Thomas Argola. Having been judged the lightest members of the group, they had been forced to share Yustaffa’s powerful garon. Yustaffa in turn had set his sizable rump upon the outlander’s mount, and Stillborn had taken Addie’s pony. So far no more horses had died—but many tempers had been lost. Raif had made a point of walking part of each day so he could offer Addie use of his mount. Mostly Addie just walked right alongside him, glad to be in full command of his hill legs.

  Addie had some knowledge of this part of the clanholds, and Raif didn’t doubt that he could have led the raid party to the mine without him. Already the cragsman had located a spring and a tender stretch of saxifrage for the horses.

  Raif decided that was something else he didn’t want to think about: why Linden Moodie had given him the lead. Quickly, he trimmed the pony’s bandages and stood. The sun was hanging above a bank of streaky clouds, still an hour or so from setting. Some of the Rift Brothers were gnawing on ptarmigan bones to fill the time, others were talking in low voices, or seeing to their mounts. Stillborn was oiling his weapons.

  The big Maimed Man had lost a considerable portion of his collection in the fall. An assortment of swords, longknives, katars and other more fantastically bladed weapons had gone over the cliff, never to be seen again. All Stillborn had managed to save had been the sword and longknife, the nail hammer he kept permanently hooked to his gear belt, and a number of items stashed in a stiffly tanned elkskin that had been slung across his back at the time of the slide.

  Raif had a strange feeling about that. Two of Stillborn’s three packs had fallen into the canyon along with his horse, yet the arrow Divining Rod had not been lost. Stillborn had found it wrapped in a stained length of linen, safe and sound in the elkskin pack. When pressed he said he did remember placing it there—it being so light and all—but it was the only thing in his daypack that he could claim no practical use for.

  Sometimes Raif wondered how many of the Maimed Men—wittingly or unwittingly—conspired to push him toward a certain point. Stillborn, Yustaffa, Addie, the outlander, even Traggis Mole himself seemed to be propelling him forward onto a course he barely understood himself.

  Enough. Glancing over at the smoke rising above the hills, Raif forced all unfinished matters from his mind, and went to speak with Stillborn.

  “How will it happen?” he heard himself ask.

  The Maimed Man was working linseed oil into the Forsworn sword with a bit of rag, and he slowed a fraction as he answered. “Smoothly, if all goes to plan. The cooled gold is kept in a locked room just below the mouth of the mine. It’s guarded by one sleepy miner or another, sometimes by the Lode Master. Any hot gold is set to cool near the furnace which is just upwind of the mine. We close in on the shanty after dark, wait until lights out, and then move in and seize the gold. If there’s scuffles we’ll keep them short and quiet.”

  Raif nodded. “How do you know so much about the layout of the mine?”

  “How d’you think? The Mole had it watched.”

  “Why isn’t the watcher in the raid party?”

  Stillborn set down his rag. For good measure he had worked linseed oil into his matched bullhorns too and they now shone black as sin. “Stop asking questions you already know the answer to, Raif. Save us both some time. Watcher’s dead, picked off by an arrow from the mine.”

  Traggis Mole hadn’t mentioned that, but it fit in more with what Raif knew about tied miners. They were hard men, and they relied on their clan for little, including defense. If they had endured one attack by the Maimed Men and found another man snooping, then things were hardly going to run as smoothly as Stillborn claimed. Raif looked at Stillborn and Stillborn stared back, his warning still in effect. No more questions you know the answer to.

  There was nothing for Raif to do but make preparations for the raid.

  Camp had been made in the leeward base of the hill. Some old sheep-run had once been dug into the soil and lined with rocks, like a streambed, and now water was trickling along it. Raif jumped down into the trench and scooped up a handful of muddy silt. Scouring it across his face and over the back of his hands, he shrouded himself for the night. The mud tingled as it dried, pulling his skin tight.

  From across the camp, Linden Moodie watched him. Something in his deep-set eyes, a certainty that he knew exactly what kind of man Raif Twelve Kill was, gave Raif pause. Moodie had already dismissed what happened on the canyon cliff as a fluke. I’ll be watching you this night, he mouthed, clearly, precisely, for Raif’s eyes alone.

  Raif let his expression harden along with the mud. In a voice pitched to carry, he called the Maimed Men to him, and then spent the next quarter digging out handfuls of mud from the old sheep-run and passing them up to each man. Anything that might catch a beam of torchlight was darkened, even the horses’ stars and socks. Yustaffa alone refused the mud, claiming that when the Scorpion God made his skin He cast the color just right. “He ran out of dye by the time He got to you lot,” Yustaffa explained airily. “And didn’t think you were worth the trouble of mixing up a new batch.”

  Maimed Men grunted at this. Already, tension was mounting. A few men were squatted around their packs, casting blocks. Gambling was normally serious business for the Maimed Men, and disputes and fighting common, but this time the gamblers were subdued, their gazes flicking to the setting sun more often than to the faces of the wooden blocks. Stillborn and Addie were speaking quietly, Addie gesturing northward with his fist. Moodie had folded and stowed his scarlet cloak, and was fixing a plain gray one around his throat. A mine was no place for finery.

  “Tonicker?”

  Raif looked over his shoulder to see Yustaffa walking toward him, holding out the hollow stopper of a jug. The fat man’s eyes were twinkling. The very things that made other men nervous seemed to delight him. Raif shook his head; he wanted no malt.

  “Your loss.” Yustaffa held the stopper to his lips and drank. “Quite a bite.” He sent a hand questing inside his pieced-fur tunic. “How about something to eat instead? I’ve some bannock—stale as stones, sadly, but you can always nibble around the blue bits—a little pot of sotted oats, and a few wilting leeks.”

  “Nothing.”

  The word had a hard edge, and Yustaffa
ceased searching his tunic for items they both knew weren’t there. Reciting the names of clan foods was just another of the fat man’s taunts. Yustaffa smiled, sending cheek fat up to eclipse his eyes. “You’ll be hungry later.”

  “I’ll be many things later. Hungry isn’t one of them.”

  Yustaffa beamed at this as he walked away. “Remember, Azziah riin Raif. It’s the excitement I wish to share, not the danger.”

  Oh gods. Sometimes Raif felt like a joint of meat on the fire; men kept prodding him to test for doneness.

  As the sun sank below the cloud cover he loaded and saddled the pony. It was going to be one of those showy sunsets where the sky turned orange and pink. The wind was picking up, and he stood by his pony’s head and let the gusts numb him. Time passed, and the sky flared like a fire, and the Maimed Men gathered in a group to watch it, and as soon as the sun disappeared beneath the horizon they mounted their horses and rode west.

  Raif led the way. He knew of a game track here, yet had decided against taking it. All known tracks were a risk, and the guarantee of a smooth ride didn’t mean as much when the snow had shrunken back and you could search the ground for yourself.

  The wind brought them sounds from the shanty well before they approached it. A hammer striking stone rang clear, and the snick of a latch as something was bolted away for the night. Raif could smell the smoke now, a pitchy, mineral scent that did not come from wood. Timber fit for burning did not grow in the balds, and the miners burned fuelstone or turf.

  The same wind that brought the scents and smells of the shanty toward the Maimed Men blew signs of their own approach away. When they reached the second hill, Raif decided to hold their course and keep the wind in their faces. He was calm except for a murmur in his heart that sounded between beats. The lack of cover worried him, and with every step he took he expected to hear a warning cry of discovery.

  Just before the raid party crested the second hill, Raif slowed them. The shanty lay in the valley beyond and they had to decide how best to approach it. Even in the darkness Raif could see the telltale signs of mining: the sunken, undermined slopes, the heaps of slag, the exposed earth where pumped mud and water had stripped away the grass.

  When the last of the Maimed Men had gathered about him, Raif said, “We’ll work our way down and around. Cresting the hill’s too big a risk. If I was the Lode Master I’d have an archer train his arrow on that ridge.” He had expected a fight—he was asking them to travel an extra league out of their way—but the Maimed Men merely nodded their assent, and he wasn’t sure how this made him feel. “The Bluey’s down there,” he continued, nodding toward the mine valley. “We’ll skirt its banks and approach the shanty from the west. They won’t be expecting anyone from that direction.”

  “The wind’ll no longer be in our favor if we move west,” Moodie said.

  “Then we’ll have to be quiet.”

  “And not fart,” Stillborn added.

  Raif threw him a look of gratitude. It might have been a poor joke, but it was an endorsement. In a choice between keeping the wind and cresting the hill, or losing it for the chance of taking the miners by surprise Stillborn was with Raif Sevrance.

  The roundabout descent took an hour. At the halfway point the shanty and the mine lake became visible below them. The shanty was a collection of squat stone cottages built a short walk east of the mine. Orwin Shank used to say they were so small and ill-constructed they looked like outhouses. Which was strange really, Raif considered, as the miners had to possess considerable skill when it came to stone. They knew how to cut, brace and move it, yet lived in unmortared, poorly chinked shanties.

  Some of the cottages were lit, others not. Tracks worn in the soft mud led to and from the entrance to the mine. Black Hole was just that: a hole in the hillside, braced with squared-off timbers. The mouth was about six feet high and the same wide; sufficient for ponies and their muck carts to pass through. Two lamps burned at either side of the mouth, and a third, more diffuse source of light came from a vent shaft located a few feet farther up the hill.

  The Bluey was a lake wholly created by pumped mine-water. It was too dark to see its color now, but Raif and Drey and the two youngest Shank brothers used to marvel at its unnatural hue. Its water was the same vivid blue-green as weathered copper. No animal would drink from it, and any birds that landed on its surface soon took off for fairer waters. It was, as far as young boys from Blackhail were concerned, a splendid place to swim.

  Raif thought about that now as he led his party around its southern shore. Between drinking Tem’s home brew and swimming in the Bluey it was a wonder he and Drey weren’t dead.

  He killed his smile before it could warm him. Memories of Drey had no place here tonight.

  The wind was blowing from behind them now, and they slowed their pace as a precaution. The mud helped, muffling hoofbeats, but bridle fittings could not be jounced. Addie was already on his feet, his shared mount abandoned. The outlander had fallen back about thirty paces, and no one seemed concerned with hurrying him up.

  As they neared Black Hole more lights went out in the shanty. Raif slid Tanjo Ten Arrow’s Sull bow from its makeshift case of coarse sacking. The varnished wood felt cool and glassy. His gaze swept in a quarter-circle back and forth, from shanty to mine, mine to shanty. When he perceived a heart beating in the darkness he did not hesitate: simply put metal to the riser and released. The arrow sped east like a night hawk, silent and deadly. Even before the rest of the raid party realized what had happened a miner lay dead.

  “Raif?” asked Stillborn.

  Raif spat to remove the taste of sorcery from his mouth. He could not explain to Stillborn, Addie and the rest that he had perceived a heart, not a man. Nor could he explain that the heart’s rhythm had undergone a swift change, accelerating from a steady pulse to a jerky gallop as its owner spied a movement along the lake. Raif’s arrow had cut off the miner’s cry of warning . . . but he couldn’t explain that either. “I saw eye whites,” was all he said.

  Stillborn delayed his answering nod long enough for Raif to know that the Maimed Man suspected more.

  Raif spoke hastily to head off Stillborn’s thoughts. “There’s a dead man at the mouth of the mine. We’d better get started before he’s found.”

  You could tell the Maimed Men weren’t clan, for they accepted this without question and drew weapons. Stillborn released the Forsworn sword from its sheath, its edge glimmering softly. Addie slung a thick eweman’s flatbow across his back, leaving his weapon hand free for his longknife. Moodie brandished a bell-bladed ax, the kind meant for throwing. Raif left his borrowed blade were it was, choosing to keep his hand on his bow. Kicking the pony forward, he set his sights on Black Hole.

  All was quiet. Mist had begun to peel from the lake and was moving east with the wind. Something about it struck Raif as strange, but he couldn’t decide what and he dismissed it from his mind. The murmur was still sounding between his heartbeats, and he was aware of the need to think only in the now. When the cry came he was almost expecting it.

  “Raiders! Raiders at the mine!”

  As the raid party mounted its charge on Black Hole, Raif loosed another arrow. It occurred to him that Traggis Mole must have known all along that this raid could not be carried out by stealth. The Robber Chief had dealt lives, hoping for a return in gold.

  Ahead lights were being struck in the shanty. Shouts sounded. An arrow whistled past Raif’s ear. Two miners raced down the mud tract that ran between Black Hole and the cottages. Addie Gunn picked one off with a shot to the thigh; Raif took the other with a shot to the heart.

  Stillborn and the other bladesmen in the party bore down on Black Hole, Raif and Addie covering them. Raif slid down from his pony. The mist was rapidly thickening, and he could see Addie squinting into it to close a shot on a miner who was running down the hillside toward the mine. Addie released the string of his flatbow but his vision had failed him and the arrow went wide. He doesn’t know
it, Raif realized with a thrill of fear, as he watched the little cragsman nod to himself and move on to another target.

  The mist. Addie couldn’t see through he mist—none of them could. Raif couldn’t. He couldn’t see men or landmarks . . . but he could perceive hearts. He hadn’t seen the miner escape Addie’s shot, he just knew that the miner’s heartbeat had continued on uninterrupted.

  Raif took a breath, made a decision. “I’m going into the mine.”

  He hardly cared if Addie heard him. He simply knew that he couldn’t continue to stand here and pick off men through the mist. Three dead so far by his hand. Miners, he told himself. Miners.

  Stillborn and five other Maimed Men were battling to gain entry to the mine. Miners, the skin on their faces rutted with huge pores, the breath wheezing in their throats, had formed a defensive line around the mouth. They wielded pickaxes and hammers and had claimed the high ground of slag that had been heaped against the entrance. Raif slid the Sull bow into the case on his back and drew his sword. It’s time you learned how to kill someone and look them in the eye.

  The Listener’s words tumbled crazily in Raif’s head as he joined the Maimed Men. The fighting at the mouth was savage and ungainly. Although the miners had the higher ground their weapons were not suited to close-quarter combat. Stillborn was leading the assault, his seamed faced red with fury, the pearly tooth at the base of his neck snapping as if it wanted to bite. The Forsworn sword screeched as it slid along the poll of an ax. Raif thought he saw the curl of iron as the sword shaved the ax blade. Other Maimed Men were following Stillborn’s lead, fired by his aggression. Linden Moodie threw his ax and it sank deep into a miner’s face, cutting his mouth and nose in two. As he fell he caused disruption in the line as some miners moved to catch him and others shoved him aside to fight.

  Raif spotted an opening. Springing forward, he raised his borrowed sword and, guiding it through a space just vacated by a miner’s hammer, thrust the point hard into a man’s hand. The man had been helping Moodie’s victim to the floor, and he dropped the body and shrieked in pain. Seconds of chaos followed as one dying man and one wounded man blocked the miner’s line.