by J. V. Jones
She dreamed of the gods. With the empty shell they had lived in less than ten feet away from her head, how could she not?
When she awoke she knew what she must do.
The flame in the safelamp was guttering, and she worried about the time. How long had she been asleep? How much oil had the lamp reservoir contained when she first picked it up from the shelf by the kitchen stair? Had it been full? Or half empty? Stiff and muddy-headed, she found she could not be sure. All was quiet. Quickly she rose and stepped into her boots. The leather felt like pulp. Her dress was soggy around the hem and didn’t smell good. She crossed to the tile entrance, placed an open hand on the indents in the stone and drew it back. Just as she swung a foot up to climb out, she thought about Dagro’s belongings on the crate. Planting the foot back on the ground, she hesitated.
The light in the lamp could go out any moment. The oil in the reservoir was gone. A tremor of panic passed along her spine, and in defiance of it, or perhaps because of it, she turned back in to the room. The few items she had secreted after her husband’s death lay on the top of the balsa-wood crate, gathering dust. Raina brushed her fingers over the tops of them, touching them one by one. She took what she needed and left.
She was going to have to kill Stannig Beade.
The price of regaining her peace of mind was his death.
The price of avenging Anwyn’s murder was his death.
The price of becoming Hail chief was his death.
This time she did not bother to hike up her skirts. She had no idea what time it was and uncertainty made her hurry. Water sloshed at her feet, rippling ahead of her every step. Light do not go out, she told the lamp. The flame had shrunk to a small tooth of red. It illuminated a weak circle around her body, barely touching the walls and the surface of the water. She could smell decay now. The rot at the heart of the Hailhouse.
Tht.
Raina’s head shot sideways to track the noise. She had just emerged from the foundation space and had climbed the half-stair to the lower cellar level. The sound had come from a corridor off to her right. Her gaze could not penetrate the blackness. She extended the lamp, but its light just created a red corona around the dark. Rat, she told herself, and moved on.
The second flight of steps seemed steeper than she remembered them and the weight of water in her dress dragged against her. Sections of the second, middle, level of the cellars were open to the space above and Raina realized she was missing the faint pools of diffused light that would filter down in daylight. It was after dark. She had slept in the strongroom all day.
Well and good. He would be back by now, and it did not take a scholar to guess where he would head once the business of settling the clan was done. Stannig Beade was growing bold in his use of this house. Raina turned from her usual path, entering a section of the underworld she had never entered before this night. Then I will have to grow bolder.
And this is my house. Not his.
Strange, but the air was different here beneath the western quadrangle. Not fresher exactly, but moving. It skimmed over the surface of the standing water, raising ripples and creating a scum of foam. The corridors narrowed, and Raina hunched her shoulders and drew her free arm close to her body. According to Effie this section had been dug at a later date than the others. Raina guessed the girl was right. The edges of the stone blocks were sharp and still square, and the mortar between them was visible as a network of pale lines. Which chief had ordered this excavation? she wondered. Which one had been worried about his head?
Raina climbed a short flight of stairs, took a right turn, and then ascended a ramp. She was moving quickly now. The standing water was gone, and the drenched hem of her skirt slapped against the ramp. For a wonder, the lamp was still burning. Raina thought about that as she reached the top of the ramp, recalling something Effie had said many months ago, when asked how she made her way through the underlevels. Don’t know. Never seem to need a light. You just see after a while. And no one can sneak up on you.
But you could sneak up on them.
Raina turned the lamp key. Her steps grew more certain . . . and more hushed. The passageways appeared to her as a series of shadowy frames, and after a while she could walk without brushing against the walls. Effie had told her about the route to the chief’s chamber while Dagro was still alive, but a sense of propriety had forbade Raina from taking it in until now. It had been Dagro’s domain, and she’d had no wish to violate his privacy. Later, when Mace had become chief, her overwhelming desire had been to avoid any place where she might encounter her second husband. With Stannig Beade it was different. The Scarpe guide could—and would—go to hell.
On impulse, Raina set down the lamp. She had no need of it now. She had remembered something that old, turkey-necked Gat Murdock had said the morning of the Sundering while dust from the Hailstone still blew in the air. “The Hail Wolf has returned.” She had paid no attention to it at the time. Gat was Gat; known for his good riddances, not his good sense. Now she realized she had missed an essential truth. The badge of Blackhail wasn’t two swords crossed in parley. It wasn’t a she-bear suckling her cubs. It was a lone wolf, scribed in silver on a black field. She, Raina Blackhail, had to become that wolf.
The darkness was her black field. She moved through it toward the chief’s chamber. When she passed beneath the entrance hall she heard footsteps and voices. A strong, rumbling vibration shook the walls. It took her a moment to realize it was the great clan door being drawn closed for the night. Good. It meant sworn clansmen would retire to the greathearth to game and sup. Clanwives would retire to their chambers with their bairns, and Scarpers would lie low and await opportunities to do whatever mischief weasels did.
It must be getting colder, Raina decided. She was shivering, and her feet were growing numb. Halting for a moment, she pulled off her boots. A cup of water swilled out from each of them. Leaving the boots in the center of the passageway, she moved on.
She padded as quietly as a wolf after that.
Effie had told her little about the passageway leading to the chief’s chamber, save that it passed beneath the entrance hall and then led down. Raina took the turn she needed and descended a series of steep, low-ceilinged ramps. Now that she’d heard the clan door being drawn on its track, she had a sense of where she stood in relation to the aboveground spaces. The knowledge that she was approaching the chief’s chamber worked upon muscles in her throat. Her airways tightened. An artery in her neck beat a pulse.
When she saw a band of light ahead, she slowed. Crouching, she touched her maiden’s helper, made sure it was there.
The light was coming from an opening at the top of the ramp. The opening was a quarter of a foot high and over twice that in length. As Raina crept toward it she saw that a slim brass grille was fixed over the aperture. The light coming through the opening was faint and softly orange. Smoke snaked between the bars of the grille. Glancing around, Raina tried to make sense of it. The ramp had come to an end by a corner where two walls met. At first she thought the passageway had ended also, but as her eyes grew accustomed to the light she spied a narrow ledge winding around the corner.
The ramp’s angle meant that she approached the opening from below. Rocking forward she switched from a crouch to a kneel. Her damp skirt hem sucked against her calves. Raising her face so that it was parallel to the opening, Raina peered through the grille.
And saw four wood poles and a pair of feet. The feet were sandaled and pointed away from her. They were a man’s feet; there was no doubt about that. They were large and covered with coarse black hairs. The right little toenail was crusty with fungus. Realizing she would see more if she altered her perspective, Raina lowered her head. The singed and ragged hem of Stannig Beade’s ceremonial robe slid into view. It was hiked up to shin height. He was sitting, she decided. That explained the four wooden poles: chair legs. And now that she could see further, she understood that he was sitting behind the Chief’s Cairn, the big chunk of ir
on gray granite that Hail chiefs used as a worktable. As she watched, tendons in his ankles relaxed and his heels rose up from the soles of his sandals. Scratching sounds followed, and Raina guessed Stannig was leaning forward to write.
Raina used the opportunity to breathe. The opening was probably a drainage conduit, cut to prevent flooding in the chief’s chamber. Excess water would drain down the ramp. Had Effie crouched here, she wondered, watching Dagro’s feet as they moved back and forth across the chamber? It was a bewildering thought. Raina remembered herself as an eight-year-old girl: men’s feet had not figured in her interests.
Suddenly tendons in Beade’s ankles sprung to life. His heels came down and his robe hem dropped to his ankles. He was standing. Swiftly, he moved across the chamber. The farther away he walked, the more Raina could see of him. Soon she could see as high as his waist. His hands were at his sides. Big, scarred, and covered in the same coarse hairs as his feet, they twitched as he moved. Abruptly he passed out of sight, screened off by a corner of the Chief’s Cairn. Sounds followed; rustling and soft thuds. Two slaps were followed by a ripe-sounding fart.
And then the lamp was snuffed. Of course, he sleeps here now.
Raina’s nostrils flared as she drew breath down constricted airways. She waited and did not move. Time passed. Dust settled. Little tingles of pain racked her knees. Mice scurried on the ramps below her; busy, aware. The roundhouse groaned as it cooled, shifting and shrinking through the night. All was quiet in the chief’s chamber. Beade slept as soundly as a man with no one to fear.
When a mouse streaked across her legs, Raina didn’t make a sound. Instead, she began to rise. The mice no longer knew she was here. It was time.
The transition from kneeling to standing took minutes as she allowed her body the opportunity to adjust to its change in state. Once upright, she padded across the ramp to the ledge. This was her darkness now. She could smell it and taste it. Her pupils felt as large as wells.
The ledge was two and a half feet wide. A drop of varying depth lay below it. Raina had some fear of it—it was not as harmless as mice, after all—but she did not let it slow her. She had found a way of moving, a rhythm, that propelled her forward without sound.
The ledge turned a perfectly square corner and ended twelve feet later. No openings here, nothing that could be peered through and used to gather intelligence. Raina did not need it. She knew the chief’s chamber well, knew exactly where the end of the ledge stood in relation to the interior space. Close to the door, and opposite Beade’s sleeping mat. Raising both palms to the wall, she searched for a mechanism that would allow entry to the chamber. She did not know what to expect. There was nothing on the interior of this wall that gave anything away—certainly not a panel of tile that slid on a track.
Tiny pills of mortar crumbled as she touched them. She had started the search at chest height and now moved higher. Fingertips ghosting across stone, she walked the length of the ledge. Nothing. She searched higher, raising her hands over her head. More nothing. Why hadn’t she thought to ask Effie for details? Because she had been appalled at the thought of spying on her husband; that was why. Virtuous Raina scuttling herself yet again.
Raina continued searching. Effie, Effie, Effie. Such a strange and endearing girl. What mischief had brought her here and kept her coming back? It was not slyness—Effie Sevrance was not that sort of girl—so it must have been curiosity. She was a child who liked to know things.
Lifting her hands away from the wall, Raina stopped in her tracks. A child. Effie had been five when she’d found this secret entrance. A wee little thing, barely three feet high. She probably hadn’t been looking for anything—just trailing her hand across the wall. Raina crouched, approximating a height of three feet. Bending her arm to shorten its length and letting her fingers idly bounce over the stone, she walked along the ledge once more. No luck. Raina deepened her crouch, and let her hand drop all the way to the base of the wall.
A foot from the end of the ledge she found it. Four finger-holes. One large hole on the bottom, three smaller ones above it. Raina inserted her thumb into the large hole and her three middle fingers into the smaller ones. Her fingertips quickly passed from stone to wood to air. This part of the wall was nothing more than a veneer; stone facing fixed to wood. A hollow core lay in its center. Raina hooked her fingertips around the lip of the wood and tugged gently. A section of wall, two feet long and a foot high, began to slide back onto the ledge. If it had been solid sandstone it would have weighed twenty stone. Yet as a hollow wooden block faced with sandstone on two sides it had to weigh under twenty pounds. And it moved freely. Something—perhaps a thin pad of felt or suede—had been fixed to the base of the block to allow ease of movement.
Raina drew it back slowly. The edges of the hollow section chinked softly against the solid wall. When the block was free she slid it along the ledge. Stale smoke wafted through the opening. All was dark and still on the other side. Hearing the faint piping of Stannig’s breath, she waited. Listened. Once she was sure the breaths were evenly paced, she drew her maiden’s helper.
A wolf, she told herself as she bellied through the hole.
Raina knew this space. An old Hailish banner depicting a silver hammer smashing the Dhoonehouse was suspended above the opening. Raina’s head brushed against its base as she passed into the chamber. Some chief’s wife famous for her constancy had embroidered the damn thing over a period of five years. All the details of the Dhoonehouse were said to be technically correct and rendered in perfect scale. It was a clan treasure now, albeit a lesser one. Raina wondered about its placement. It seemed convenient that its base covered the join where the fake wall and real wall met. Good for her, though. It meant there had been one less discrepancy capable of catching Beade’s eye.
Raina stood. The chamber was a fraction brighter than the passageway. A torch burning in the adjacent stairwell sent a ghostly plane of light under the door. After hours of near total darkness, Raina found it easy to see through the gloom. The chamber was sparsely furnished: a single chair, the chief’s cairn, various weaponry suspended from the ceiling and walls. Beade’s sleeping mat.
The clan guide of Scarpe and Blackhail lay asleep and naked on his back. A light-colored blanket was twisted around his legs. His head had lolled to the side and his mouth was open. Drool rolling toward his left ear shone faintly in the borrowed light. Raina took in all the details: the hands resting on the belly, the eyelids twitching as he dreamed, the dense, graying mat of pubic hair, the water jug standing close to his shoulder. It was power she felt, not fear or bravery. A cold and joyless satisfaction that spoke to her and said, He’s mine.
Was this how chiefs felt when they rode to war with superior numbers and weapons? No pleasure, just an emotion that lived between pride and contempt? Was this how Beade felt as he waited to murder Anwyn?
No. Raina shook her head as she glided toward him. Because I feel fury as well.
Anwyn Bird was the single best clansman in Blackhail; its solid, dependable heart. A protector to a thirteen-year-old newly arrived from Dregg. Girl, you will stay in the kitchen with me and I’ll hear no fussing about it. Those had been Anwyn’s first words to her; the beginning of a twenty-year friendship that had been the most complicated and long-lived relationship of Raina’s life.
I failed you, Anny. My dear one. My love.
Do wolves weep as they kill? Raina did not think so. Forcing herself not to blink, she kept her eyes dry. She had a job to do and moved into position to accomplish it.
Claiming power.
Becoming the Hail Wolf.
Leaving the old Raina behind.
When she was ready, she picked up the water jug in her free hand and emptied its contents over Beade’s face. His eyes snapped opened and his head jerked upright. Several things happened quickly one after another then. He recognized the person kneeling over him, instantly understood her intent, felt the blade of the maiden’s helper enter his throat, reared up his
shoulders in an instinct he was powerless to stop—the desire to be upright when facing danger—felt the blade go deeper, coughed in panic and swung his big right hammerman’s fist up toward Raina. She took an angled blow to the underside of her jaw. Her teeth were firmly clamped together and the force was transferred to her skull. Vertebrae in her neck crunched together as her head traveled sideways and back. Her vision rippled like a stone dropped into water. But her grip on the knife’s handle held firm.
Beade watched as she murdered him.
There were hard sinews and thickly walled tubing in a man’s throat and Raina had to saw with the knife to sever them. Blood pumped from the ragged hole, coating her hand. It was as warm as bathwater. Beade was losing strength. His hands and lower arms flailed, yet he could no longer lift his upper arms from the sleeping mat. His teeth were bared. Surprise and panic had left his eyes. The eyelids fluttered, preparing to close.
Rising higher, Raina applied more force. “Look at me,” she whispered. “You waited too long, Scarpeman. Should have killed me the same day you murdered Anwyn. Should have watched your back. The Hail Wolf returned and you didn’t even know it.”
She spoke other things then, dark words that spilled out of her like poison, words that had been trapped inside her body ever since the day in the Oldwood when she had been raped by her foster son, Mace Blackhail. She spoke and sawed as blood rolled across the floor and pooled around her knees and the lamplight beyond the door flickered and waned. Mace, she named the dying man. Mace. Mace. Mace.
When his heart began seizing she reached behind her back and pulled Dagro’s silver ceremonial knife from her belt. Probably she was damned forever for what happened next, for she took the knife in both hands and stabbed him through the heart. She was smiling.
Rising, she left him there: a corpse in the chief’s chamber, a chief’s knife sticking out from its chest. She felt wild and filled with power.
Released.
