by J. V. Jones
It was a gift, and Raif took it. Making a rough bed from the blankets, he closed his eyes and slept.
When he awoke the next morning it was still dark. Mist washing in through the mouth of the cave had coated every surface with a film of moisture. A single grass lamp burned on the rock floor by Raif’s bed, its damp wick giving off as much smoke as light. Raif felt stiff but good. Rested and hungry. He could smell fatty meat charring and stood to investigate. His left ankle took weight with only a mild spasm of protest, though if anything it looked worse than it had in three days. The bruising had turned black and purple and for some reason his big toe had started to swell. He ignored it. It was a skill he was getting better at.
Stillborn was out on the ledge, hunched around a tiny little fire, a red blanket pulled tight across his shoulders, browning a length of cured sausage on a stick. He was shivering and talking to himself, saying the words, “Bloody, bloody, bloody. Sod it, sod it, sod it,” in a weary voice that might have been intended to keep him awake. He wasn’t aware of Raif standing at the mouth of the cave.
The sky had cleared and the stars were out over the clanholds, and Raif realized it was the first time he had seen stars that could be relied upon in over a month. The nights he’d spent in the canyonlands had been overcast. Starlight lit the domes of the Copper Hills and the sea of mist surrounding them. The Lost Clan was out there, and Dhoone. Quietly, Raif turned and stepped back into the cave.
This time he made more noise, banging the bronze bowl that contained the water and rifling through his pack for the items he meant to give Stillborn.
“You up, lazy-days?” came Stillborn’s grumpy voice. “Come out here and watch the fire while I take a quick kip before we leave.”
Raif understood the language here. Watch the fire meant simply watch. Crossing to the ledge he greeted Stillborn.
“What’s this?” demanded the Maimed Man, staring suspiciously at the small packs and pouches that were squashed against Raif’s chest.
Raif sat, letting the packages spill forward onto the rimrock. “Cheese, honey, dates, almonds, butter, dried apricots, lentils. Not the sheep’s curd and the tea herbs, though. They’re for Addie.”
“Give him the lentils too,” Stillborn said magnanimously, reaching for the largest pack. “Little orange buggers make me fart.”
They had a good breakfast of sausage dipped in honey and nuts dipped in melted sheep’s butter. The minute he stopped eating Stillborn fell asleep. His chin dropped against his chest, his massive shoulders slumped, his mouth fell open, and he began to snore vigorously and, oddly enough, in tune.
Raif drank water and watched the fire. The mist was receding and the flames brightened as he poked air between the sticks. The Rift was silent now. A slight shimmering of the darkness at eye level told him that it was venting heat. Time passed and after a while Raif reached inside his tunic and pulled out the pouch containing the stormglass.
It was beautiful to look at in the starlight. Light reflected and refracted, twinkled into existence. Moved. Its rounded sides felt good in his hand, like a talisman, and as he held it the glass warmed.
I give no promises. Raif mouthed the words he’d said to Tallal. Disturbed by their hollowness he said them again out loud.
“I give no promises.”
“What? Where?” Stillborn said blearily, his head snapping up from his chest. A line of drool rolled down his chin as he look accusingly at Raif. “A man can’t sleep nowhere nohow in this place.” Standing abruptly, he said, “Fuck it. We’d better get going.”
They got their gear together and killed the fire and the lamp. As they climbed up through the city, air rising from the Rift cooled the exposed skin on Raif’s neck and face. Maimed Men walked and climbed through the thinning mist, heads hooded against the damp, torches swinging before them on long poles. Stillborn greeted some with curt nods. Others he ignored. He was wearing a tunic sewn from pieced wolverine skins edged with black leather, and a flat-paneled bearskin kilt. His arms and lower legs were bare, though they looked as if they’d been rubbed with lard for warmth. He carried no hunting bow but had brought a single, case-hardened throwing spear, five feet long and tapered at both ends. He used the spear as a walking stick, tapping the rimrock as he walked.
Raif was wearing the Orrl cloak and he noticed that some men did not see him until he was right upon them, so perfectly did the cloak match the mist. The Sull bow was strung crosswise against his back and his arrowcase, containing the scant half-dozen arrows he had left, rode high on his right shoulder. The borrowed sword swung from his waist. He had not drawn it yet, so could claim no firsthand knowledge of the blade, but judging from the ring pommel and iron crossguards, it was probably a basic cut-and-thruster.
As they made their way east the sky began to lighten and the smell of grass and willow smoke grew stronger. Children emerged, rumpled and sleepy-eyed, from lean-tos built against the cave mouths. Some caves had been closed off by cane screens or animal hides. Others were open to the night. Custom demanded that you did not peer into those spaces as you passed them. Maimed Men expected privacy in their caves.
Addie Gunn was waiting on the easternmost point of the city, a jagged granite promontory that extended fifty feet over the Rift. He was alone, cloaked and hooded in plain brown wool and leaning upon an oak staff. His lips pressed to a thin line when he saw them and he declared without greeting, “You are late.”
Stillborn said, “And a fine morning to you, Addie Gunn.”
Addie ignored this and said to Raif, “You’re looking better, lad.”
“Looked like hell last night,” Stillborn said, clapping Raif hard on the back. “A night’s sleep prettied him up quite considerably.”
The cragsman nodded, thoughtful. “We’d best head off.”
Stillborn bowed, somewhat creakily, at the waist. “Lead the way.”
The sun floated beneath the horizon as they headed north from the rim, turning the sky red and then pink. Breezes snapped at groundlevel but there was no real wind. Raif had never traveled east or north of the Rift and was interested in the paths Addie chose. The cragsman led them across a rocky headland strewn with boulders and overgrown with spiny yellow grasses, juniper and holly. Small, dun-colored birds flew out from beneath bushes as they passed. Raif spotted hares in molt, ground squirrels, rats, mice and voles. As always it was difficult for him to tell if he actually saw the animals, or simply felt their beating hearts. He’d pass a loose pile of rocks and know that a vole was hiding within the shadows, quivering.
“Does anyone set traps?” he asked Addie as they made their way along a brush-choked draw.
Addie shook his head. Now that the sun had risen he had drawn back his hood, revealing his closely shaved scalp and big ears. “A few do. Mostly it’s not considered worth it. Land’s like dry bone.”
Raif wanted to disagree, but didn’t. A reluctance to reveal how different he was to other men stopped him. Instead, he made a mental note about traps. Hungry men and women would be glad of squirrel, vole and hare.
The morning wore on. The sun shone with cool brilliance in a blue cloudless sky. After leading them north for an hour or so Addie turned east and they were now descending into a trough-shaped valley carved by some long-retreated glacier. Huge erratic boulders and heaps of gravel peeked out through the thick ground cover of willow, fireweed and black sedge. A series of small green ponds arranged like beads on a thread ran along the center of the valley floor.
“Goats have gone to high ground for the kidding,” Addie said, poking bushes with his stick as he searched for prints and scat. “Might see deer if the luck’s with us. Elk’ll have gone west. Coons and pines: they’ll be here, all right. Trick is spotting ’em. Bears, now . . . ” He shook his head. “Better chance of cats.”
Raif listened to the cragsman’s litany, interested and alert. They were at the head of the valley on a steep downslope where he could see for leagues due east. The oily smell of sedge filled his nostrils and icy breezes lifted
his hair from his scalp. Creatures were alive down there, moving beneath the willow, and he, Raif Sevrance, would hunt them. Life was simple and clear, and once Addie Gunn had finished speaking, Raif braced his bow and set off alone for the valley floor.
Glancing down at the Orrl cloak he saw the glazed leather now reflected the gray-green colors of the sedge. Briefly he wondered if the cloak also masked his man-scent, for he had noticed that as long as he moved quietly he was nearly impossible to detect. His first kill was a three-foot garter snake just emerging from her winter sleep. She was sliding between two ground junipers when he speared her with his new sword. Deciding to leave her whole with the gut intact, he slipped the snake between the waxed folds of his makeshift gamepouch. As he wiped his swordblade clean with a fist of fireweed, he was already scanning his next kill.
A raccoon, her belly swollen with soon-to-be-born kits, had denned in a shallow depression beneath a loose pile of rocks. Raif sent an arrow straight into her heart. It beat and then stopped. The unborn kits continued living for a while and then, one by one, their tiny, perfectly formed hearts ceased pumping. Raif sawed through the arrowshaft, unwilling to pull it and risk the head coming loose. Left inside it would hold the carcass intact. After that he decided to form a game pile, and chose an exposed spot on top of one of the boulders. That way if vultures or other opportunists spied the carrion, either Addie or Stillborn could cover it. Might even bag a fat bird for the pot.
Raif pushed off again, searching. It wasn’t a good time of day for deer but he had a feeling that the water and the lush growth surrounding it might bring them out, so he made his way deeper into the valley. An hour passed, and then another. The sun moved overhead and flies began buzzing around the gamepouch. When Raif became aware of a large heart close by, watchful and beating with strong, easy strokes, he thought at first it was a brown bear. Then knowledge came to him and he was surprised he could have imagined it was anything other than a cat. Raif moved at the same time the cat did, bringing the bow to vertical as he drew back the string. The cat sprang away, leaping into the deep cover of willows and rocks. It was a full-grown male, heavy as two grown men with a pale silver coat free of markings. Raif loosed his first arrow and watched as it sped wide. He could sense the creature’s heart but in the time it took for the arrow to leave the riser and cross the distance between Raif and the cat, the cat was already gone. His second arrow grazed the snagcat’s rump. And then, just as Raif brought a third arrow to the plate, something sped past his face. He heard a whoosh followed by a thud of impact and knew instantly that the snagcat had faltered. Keeping his hands firm on bow and bowstring, he aimed the arrow and loosed it.
The big cat stopped. Dead. Raif’s heart pounded and a familiar liquid pain rolled across his left shoulder—the first time he’d felt it in days.
“Is he down?” came Stillborn’s call. The Maimed Man was standing high above Raif on a bank of stratified rock. Until the moment he had thrown the spear, Raif had been unaware of his presence. Raif was surprised by his own failings. Without Stillborn the cat would have got away. And he should have known Stillborn was there.
Stillborn jumped down onto the valley floor and walked toward the cat. The distance he had thrown the spear was impressive, a length no shorter than two hundred feet. “Saw you fire off a couple of arrows,” he said. “Looked like you needed some help.”
Raif nodded, attempting to conceal the confusion and irritation he felt.
Stillborn saw it anyway. “Best go look for your arrows, lad.”
He did just that, leaving Stillborn to the kill. Two arrows had gone astray, and after searching for a quarter-hour in the brush Raif realized he wasn’t going to find them. That had never really been the point.
Calmer, he returned to Stillborn and the cat. The Maimed Man had opened up the carcass, split the ribs and was in the process of removing the organ tree. The bloody, glistening flesh was steaming.
“Took your arrow out of the heart,” he said in greeting as he cut through greenish back fat. “It’s over there, on the rock.”
Raif nodded, though Stillborn was not looking at him. “The liver’s yours.”
Slowing his knife, Stillborn said, “I’m glad to hear it. Come here and help me with the gut.”
Together they cleaned and drained the carcass. The liver, the prize awarded to the hunter who brought down the kill, sat darkly on a bed of plucked fireweed, seeping blood. The sun, beginning its slow descent into the west, gave off something that felt like warmth. Addie Gunn reached them just as they decided to trophy-cut the snagcat’s hide. The cragsman was dragging a yearling kid by its hind leg. He seemed happy enough to set his own butchering duties aside to advise on the best cuts to preserve the tail and legs.
It was hard work, and Addie built a spotfire so they could be be refreshed with tea. The little cragsman was delighted when Raif handed him the muslin pouch containing the lamb brothers’ herbs.
“Treasure,” he said, holding the pouch to his nose and inhaling deeply. “Smells like all the places a man could ever want to be.”
Raif felt stupidly pleased. Sweat was dripping from his nose and dried blood reached all the way up to his elbows. “There’s sheep’s curd too, but I left that back at that Rift.”
“Now that will be interesting,” Addie said, sprinkling a few of the precious herbs into the pot. “I used to make me own back . . . back in another life.”
Raif and Stillborn nodded soberly. All three of them had once lived lives as clansmen. Addie had been tied to Wellhouse as a cragsman, Stillborn had been born dead into Scarpe before being revived by a midwife, and Raif had spoken an oath to Blackhail and broken it. They were quiet for a while after that, setting their backs against the rocks as they sipped on wormwood tea.
Finally, Raif set down his cup and asked the question he needed to ask. “What has happened in the Rift since I left?”
Addie and Stillborn exchanged a glance. Stillborn nodded almost imperceptibly at the cragsman. You take it.
“Harmful times, Raif,” Addie said, taking a stick and breaking up the fire. “Mole’s getting nervous and it’s making him quick with his knives. If you’re not loyal to him you’ll be paid a call in the night. Ten days back a half-dozen men were murdered in their beds. Throats slit from ear to ear, tongues sliced down the center. They call it the Vor king’s kiss. Kill them and then split their tongues so even their corpses can’t squeal. All six of the men had been heard complaining about the Mole. You know the sort of thing: Where’s the food? Why did the last raid fail? What’s the Mole doing for us? Harmless stuff in harmless times. But times aren’t harmless anymore, and it serves a man well to shut up and starve.”
“Why’s Traggis Mole afraid?” Raif asked.
Again, there was that look, passed between Addie and Stillborn.
The cragsman took a deep breath, set down his fire-poking stick. “Mole’s worst nightmare’s happening and he’s powerless to stop it. Night after we returned from Black Hole something godless broke free from the Rift.”
At Addie’s words both Raif’s and Stillborn’s right arms twitched. The ghost of clan, that desire to reach down and touch your measure of powdered guidestone whenever you felt a beat of fear. Addie must have seen and recognized the impulse, but he continued speaking his rough, backcountry voice low as if he feared to be overheard.
“Something not whole walked on the rimrock. Those that saw it said it was like night made into a man, dark and rippling, like it shouldn’t have weighed anything at all. But I myself saw the cracks that it made in the stone. Rift brothers tried to stop it—Linden Moodie hacked off an arm—but it couldn’t be stopped. Took thirteen before it left. Women, bairns, men.” Addie shuddered. “The bodies blackened like they were burned, then they were gone.”
Raif thought of the lamb brother Farli, and the Forsworn knight in the redoubt. “Next time the bodies must be destroyed.”
Addie Gunn studied Raif’s face, understanding much from the little he had
said. “Aye,” he said softly, spinning the word into confirmation of his worst fear.
Next time.
“What did Traggis Mole do?”
“What could he do? Took a swipe at the thing with his longknife, received a cut to the ribs. Ordered everyone back to their beds. Was set to take care of the bodies . . . afore the bodies took care of themselves.” With that Addie seemed to run out of strength.
Stillborn, noticing the slump in the cragsman’s shoulders, took over. “Mole’s been telling everyone that it won’t come back. The Rift Brothers are scared out their wits. Those men the Mole killed? Sent to the Rift the next morning, as if somehow that could help. Throw enough bodies down there and you stop the evil getting out.” Stillborn blew air from his lips. “People are starting to say that the Mole can’t help them. Mole’s saying right back, ‘Step out of line and you’re dead.’ He’s made mistakes, and that’s not like him. Two of the six men he killed were good hunters. Means less meat, more discontent. Who knows how long Addie and myself are safe? I used to think being a good hunter counted for something. Now I’m thinking if the man-thing from the Rift doesna get me Traggis Mole will.”
Raif nodded slowly. It was worse than he had thought. Whatever he had done at the Fortress of Grey Ice had been nothing more than shoring up a crack. Pressure was building. First the Unmade in the lamb brothers’ camp. Now this. They’re searching for weak points, he realized. They discovered one in the fortress but now that’s sealed they’re finding other ways out.
He lost himself in his thoughts for a while, remembering snatches of conversation from his past. Addie Gunn had told him the Rift was the greatest flaw in the earth. If it were to be ripped open life for the Maimed Men and the entire clanholds would be over. Hundreds of thousands of Unmade would ride out.
And the Endlords.
Just their name alone sent a knife of fear into Raif’s heart.
Why me? Why was he the one who must fight them? The two things he had wanted from life were to be a decent clansman and a good brother to Effie and Drey. Now he would be neither. Now he was Mor Drakka, Watcher of the Dead. How had that happened? When? He didn’t suppose the answer mattered much in the end. What choice did he have here? What man or woman, knowing the things he did, would walk away?
