by J. V. Jones
He remembered the Shatan Maer. Sword or bow? The Listener had advised him to learn how to kill with a sword, look his victims in the eyes as he took their lives. Raif had learned. He could list the men he had killed with his sword. Chokko of Clan Bludd. The Forsworn knight. Bitty Shank. Deep in his core Raif knew the Listener had been right. It was too easy for him to kill with a bow. It was swift and uninvolved and he could do it from a distance of a hundred and sixty paces.
Yet the Listener had been speaking of men. Raif had slain the Shatan Maer with his sword. It had been sickening and exhausting, and it had not made him a better man. Heritas Cant had told him the Unmade were already dead. They might look like men, but they were not men. Their flesh had been claimed by the Endlords, and changed in ways Raif did not understand. They had hearts, he had learned that for himself, but those hearts did not pump blood.
A tingle of pain sounded in the muscle of Raif’s shoulder. Ignoring it, he sheathed his sword. As he reached for the Sull bow he glanced briefly at that lamb brother walking woozily across the dunes. The man had his spear lightly balanced above his shoulder, but his mind was on his footing and he’d allowed the point to droop. Better to stay put, Raif decided. Let whatever was out there come to you.
“To me!” he called out, running numb fingers over the finely waxed twine that braced the bow. When the lamb brother’s course failed to change, Raif yelled, “Get back.” The lamb brother heard him this time, acknowledging the noise with a slight sideways motion of his veiled head, but he did not stop. He’d halved the distance between his original position and the puff of the dust, and was accelerating down a dune. Raif guessed the lamb brother had understood the instruction well enough, and had chosen not to heed it.
He did not know then; had no experience to warn him what might be out there. Raif thought starkly, Who has?
Unable to warm the wax with his fingers, he settled for smoothing the twine. The Sull bow felt as light as a stalk of grass. Out of habit he flexed the belly before drawing. Nights as cold as this killed bows. Self bows, those made from a single stave of wood, could simply snap. Built ones would curl and come unglued. The Sull bow was a built recurve, constructed from layers of horn laid down in alternating strips. If it were a clan-made bow it would have felt stiff and brittle and a clansman might think twice about using it. The Sull bow bent as easily as a dancer’s spine, ticking once as the recurve popped out. Made for nights like this, it was ready.
Raif slid an arrow from the case, laid it against the riser. The action calmed him, and he found himself remembering his father’s voice.
“So, will you be a hammerman like your brother Drey?”
“No, Da. I choose the bow.”
Hooking the twine with his three middle fingers, he pulled back the Sull recurve. Straightaway his focus shifted. Background blurred. Individual stars bled into stripes. The outlines of the dunes sharpened. Raif searched for and found the foot-size mound of settled pumice that seconds earlier had been dust in the air. Fist on level with his right shoulder, he held a full draw as he tracked the surrounding space. The lamb brother was approaching the mound, caution slowing his pace. Hard breaths made the cloth panel covering his mouth move like bellows. Raif briefly sighted the man’s heart. Its rhythm was unfamiliar to him, but he could still read the fear. With a small mental tug, he pulled away.
Raising his sights he scanned the cinder cones beyond the dunes. He did not expect to spot anything amongst the ancient, deteriorating vents. That wasn’t the point. Something was waiting in the dunes. Until it moved it could not be spotted . . . and it would not move until it could strike.
The cones were still. The peculiar quality of starlight made it impossible to accurately gauge their height or distance. To Raif they were evidence of the doom that had been laid on the Want. The earth’s crust was not stable here. Fissures undermined it, molten rock charged it, and things had a nasty habit of forcing their way out. Kahl Barranon, the Fortress of Grey Ice, had been built on flawed mountain rock. It could be a thousand leagues from here, or maybe less than ten. Slowly, Raif was coming to understand that distance didn’t matter in this place. What mattered was the Want was wounded. Its skin was riddled with cracks and the Shatan Maer had tried to push itself through the largest. Raif had sealed that breach, but looking out across the cones he guessed it was not the only one.
“Go no further,” he murmured, dropping his gaze to the lamb brother on the dunes. The man was about twenty paces from the disturbed dust. Both hands were on his spear and he was moving forward slowly, stabbing air. Raif scanned the space directly in front of him. Nothing. As he panned wider, muscles in his draw arm started to quake as the twine began to slice into the joint of his index finger. Ballic the Red had once told him that holding a longbow at full draw was the equivalent of lifting a grown man one-handed. “Release quickly,” the master bowman had advised. “Every second you wait power and accuracy are lost.”
At the edge of his vision something moved. A section of air rippled and for an instant a shape was revealed. Behind the lamb brother’s back, dust smoked from the dune.
“Watch out!” Raif screamed, angling his bow. As the lamb brother spun around, the dunes exploded. Dust sprayed up in a footstep pattern heading straight toward the lamb brother. Pumice glittered in the air, making it difficult to see. Raif glimpsed something dark and not quite human. As soon as he had it in his sights it was gone. The lamb brother’s robes began to flap as air rushed against him. Bracing himself he distributed his weight evenly between his legs, stabilizing the spear at his waist.
A high metallic screech sounded, and then everything was obscured by whirling dust. Raif fought down panic. He couldn’t see. Part of him wanted to run away, save himself while he still had time.
Noises spat from the dust cloud like sparks. Something grunted. A wailing gasp was followed by the weird harmony of metal meeting metal on a sweet spot. Blades clashed. Raif spied the shadowy outline of a head between curling lanes of dust. Dropping his sights, he searched for a heart.
An invisible line spooled from the center of his eye, slipping effortlessly through the swirling pumice. Straightaway it found a heart. Hot and red, it hammered in imperfect time. Raif recognized it and switched his gaze. The lamb brother. Both combatants were moving frantically, their torsos jerking back and forth. Raif felt the sickening suction of an unmade heart, but as he tried to lock it in his sights, the lamb brother stepped across his line of view.
Move, he mouthed, experiencing something close to shock as utter cold was replaced with heat.
Suddenly the hot heart faltered. A thin cry sounded, and for a moment all fell quiet. Raif knew he could not afford to think about what it meant. Pushing his awareness forward, he locked on to the second heart. It was like plunging into icy black water. He could not see or breathe; just feel the coldness seize his chest. His first instinct was to get out—this was not a living organ and he had no place here—but the suction he’d felt earlier pulled him in.
A river of darkness flowed through the heart’s malformed chambers, its slow, muscular current animating the meat and teeth and membranes of the Unmade. Raif’s own heart fell in time so quickly it was as if it had been waiting all along to match the rhythm of the dead. The moment loosened. He thought of Drey and Effie, and could not imagine a time when loving them wouldn’t hurt. Follow the current and it would no longer matter. He wouldn’t have to feel or think.
Ma-dum. Ma-dum. Ma-dum. The current tugged him under. Downriver all was shadow, a darkly welcoming place. Raif’s middle and index fingers twitched, easing his grip on the arrow. All he had to do was let go.
“Will you come back?” Stillborn’s question, spoken all those weeks ago at Black Hole, broke the rhythm.
Raif blinked. He was bone cold, almost frozen in place. The unmade heart contracted strongly, powering the surrounding flesh. Raif smelled the raw blackness of the void . . . and remembered what he had to do.
Closing his eyes he released t
he string. The twine whipped forward and lashed his wrist. Concussion from the recoil passed through his left arm and into his shoulder. Pain jabbed at the scarred flesh. It barely registered. The arrow had entered heart-meat.
The creature from the Blind buckled and collapsed. Hitting the dunes, it raised a coffin-shaped cloud of dust. Raif thought he heard a noise, a sort of sucking crackle, as its heart collapsed.
In the quiet seconds that followed Raif stood and breathed and did not think. Coppery saliva collected in the bottom of his mouth. Behind him he was aware of movement as the remaining lamb brothers crossed the dunes. Directly ahead, the dust began to settle and two fallen bodies emerged. Scrubbing a hand over his face to brush off ice crystals that had accumulated on his eyelashes and facial hair, Raif made his way toward them. Deep within, he fought the impulse to name the Stone Gods. He would not claim the comforts of clan.
The first body was part sunk into the pumice. The lamb brother had fallen on his stomach and a small wet slit in his sable robe was his only visible injury. It was an exit wound; he’d been gored through the gut. Raif dropped to his knees and gently turned him. The body was already growing stiff. Dark vapor curled from the wet and ragged hole that had been torn in his lower abdomen. The impact of the fall had dislodged his headpiece and Raif got his first look at the lamb brother’s face. His youth came as a shock.
“Leave him,” Tallal ordered, approaching. “It is forbidden for jinna to touch our dead.”
Raif bowed his head, not understanding fully what the lamb brother meant, but hearing enough in his voice to realize he was upset. With an effort, Raif rose to his feet. He was exhausted, and the pain in his left shoulder was rapidly draining what little strength he had left. He did not want to look at the second body, but didn’t know what else to do. All three lamb brothers were on the dune now, silent men wrapped from head to foot in dark wool robes. They did not want him here, he could tell that from the way they moved to separate him from the body. Perhaps they blamed him for their brother’s death. Perhaps they were right.
The creature from the Blind had fallen on its knees, and by some strange alignment of its spine its body still knelt upright. As Raif drew near he detected the same raw, alien odor he’d smelled earlier. The creature was naked and its head and part of its chest were covered in fine scales. It was not quite human. Oversize blood vessels running along its arms and legs fed bulbous humps of loosely slung muscle. A bone spur on one side of its jaw protruded through its skin. Raif shuddered and moved away.
The creature’s weapon had landed a small distance from its body, and he walked over to inspect it. The thick, night-black sword was burning a hole in the dune. It had already sunk two feet. The walls of the hole gleamed softly as pumice was transformed into glass.
Voided steel.
Raif glanced at the lamb brothers; two were kneeling by the body while the third was prayer-walking at the base of the dune. Raif crossed over to Tallal. The lamb brother was rewinding the cloth around his slain brother’s face.
Not knowing how to soften what he was about to say, Raif coughed to get Tallal’s attention. “We must burn the body. Quickly.”
Tallal’s long, slender hands ceased moving. “Leave us,” he replied without looking up. “Return to the camp while we prepare Farli for the journey.”
Farli. Tallal had slipped and spoken his brother’s name. Raif repeated it to himself, committing it to memory. You did not forget a man you had fought alongside. When he spoke, his voice was hard. “Your brother has been killed by voided steel. The metal does not belong in this world. If you leave your brother’s body intact it will be consumed by dawn, claimed by the same evil that created that thing over there. He will become one of them, and once that happens I cannot say how long he’ll be damned.”
All three lamb brothers looked at him. The elder brother who was prayer-walking stopped midstep.
Raif pressed on. “I have seen it with my own eyes. Forsworn knights, slain by the same make of weapon. Their bodies were stripped. Despoiled.” He halted, remembering the Forsworn redoubt, the black stains the four bodies had left on the floor. “We must destroy the body. Now.”
Tallal shook his head. “We do not burn our dead.”
“If you do not burn him I will.”
Raif did not know whether it was the words or the threat behind them that got through to Tallal. The lamb brother looked first at the elder and then at the brother who was kneeling on the other side of the body. Both men nodded almost imperceptibly, letting it be known they acceded to whatever decision Tallal made.
Tallal closed his eyes, took a breath, and then opened them. In the seconds that it took he had aged. “We must cleanse him first.”
“Be quick,” Raif warned, before heading back to the camp.
The mist began to rise as he traced the lamb brothers’ footsteps to the tents. Darkness held. The animals were quiet as he approached, the cookfire dead and smoking. Raif slipped inside his tent. Sitting on the mattress he pulled the wool blankets around him. He just wanted to get warm. After a while, he rose, fearful of falling asleep.
His hands felt big and dull as he poured himself a cup of water. Clumsily, he spilled liquid down his cloak. Exhaustion was making him shake. Although he did not much want to he forced himself to go outside and search for oil. Aware that the lamb brothers kept most supplies in the corral, he headed toward the animals. The milk ewe bleated as he stepped over the hide barrier and entered her tiny domain. She was a fine-looking animal, with bright eyes and a curly coat. Her udder was swollen with milk. To comfort her Raif unhooked her honey log from the ceiling and placed it within her reach. The mules poked their heads over the partition wall and watched as he searched for oil.
Once he’d found a brick of sheep’s butter and a carafe of lamp oil, he nodded farewell to the animals and left. A sharp breeze pushed him forward. The great dome of stars was paling, and the mist was on the move. Raif spent most of the journey looking at his feet. He did not want to get lost. As he studied the footprints leading to and from the dunes he realized that one of the lamb brothers must have made his way back to the camp and then returned to the bodies. The thought that someone had been at the camp at the same time he was there bothered him. Why had they not made themselves known?
When he reached the dune he saw that all three men were standing over the body of their slain brother, heads bowed, face cloths moving as they prayed. Something had been done to the body. An L-shaped incision had been made to open the chest, but Raif was only allowed a fleeting glimpse. As Tallal stepped forward to bar his approach, a second brother hastily covered the corpse.
Feeling unwelcome, Raif indicated the things he had brought. “I’ll prime the fire.”
“No.” Tallal faced him and said no more.
Raif said, “I would help you.” Even beneath the gravecloth, he could see the corpse was smoking.
“You have slain the wrall. That is enough.”
Raif was surprised to hear the world wrall from Tallal. It was the same one used by Heritas Cant all those months ago in Ille Glaive. He would have liked to ask to what the lamb brother knew of them, but the time wasn’t right. Placing the carafe and butter on the ground, he said, “It must be done now.”
“As you wish.” It was a dismissal, and Tallal stood and waited until Raif realized that fact.
It was a long walk back to the camp. As he approached the tent circle Raif smelled burning oil and felt some measure of relief.
Knowing he would not sleep, he set about rebuilding the fire. The discipline of peeling sticks, packing kindling and stacking logs helped clear his mind. “It’s no small thing to build a fire,” Da always said, and Raif decided he was right. When the flames grew fierce enough to sustain themselves, he sat back on his cloak and watched. The heat felt good. It burned, and that was fine.
Dawn came. The mist drained, and clouds began crossing the sky. The lamb brothers did not return. Raif rose, deciding he would milk the ewe. She was b
leating plaintively now, in need of release.
Tomorrow he would leave this place. He barely wanted to admit it, but some small childlike part of himself had hoped that he might find a home with the lamb brothers. They searched for the lost soul of the dead; he watched the dead. It had seemed . . . fitting. Right. Only it wasn’t, and he’d been a fool to imagine otherwise. He did not blame them. How could he? They had healed and sheltered him. They deserved his thanks and respect.
Who he was, what he did, had shocked them. They dealt in spirits. He dealt in flesh.
Raif caught the raven lore in his fist and turned it. The hooked piece of bird ivory felt as rough as if it had been scoured by the dunes.
Will you come back?
Strange as it was, the Maimed Men had accepted him. Stillborn, Addie Gunn, even the Robber Chief himself, Traggis Mole: none cared about his past. They had used him, but perhaps he was made to be used. And they needed him. The Rift was the deepest canyon in the North. Its greatest flaw. Maimed Men would be the first to die if it were breached. After tonight he understood that what had happened in the Fortress of Grey Ice had slowed, but not changed, things. The Unmade were still pushing through.
Someone had to push the other way.
Letting the lore drop against his chest, Raif went to milk the ewe.
Yes, I’m coming back.
TWELVE
Along the Wolf
Effie Sevrance sneezed. It was a big thick one with lots of snot. In the old days she would have been mortified; there’d be Letty Shank and Florrie Horn squirming and crying “Eeeew!,” Raina shaking her head and saying, “Really, Effie, get a cloth,” and Da warning, “Wipe that on your sleeve and I’ll tan your backside. I didn’t trade two unopened fawn carcasses for that dress to be spoiled within a year.” Da never tanned her backside, not once. She knew he didn’t mean it. He knew that she knew. It was the thing that came after that hurt. “What would your mother think?” Effie reckoned those five words held more power than an entire armory of swords. They were like a spell: speak them and he who hears them will change.
