A Cavern Of Black Ice (Book 1)

by J. V. Jones

  “We’re home, Raif,” Drey said, punching Raif’s pack. “Home!”

  Raif swung a punch at Drey’s ribs, then took off at full speed toward the rise. Drey yelled after him to wait, called him a devil’s cur and a moose stag in rut, and then started running himself.

  Laughing, whooping, and wrestling, the two brothers reached the rise. They stopped dead when they saw the meet party riding up the leeward slope toward them.

  Corbie Meese, Shor Gormalin, Orwin Shank and his two middle sons, Will Hawk, Ballic the Red, a dozen yearmen and tied clansmen, Raina Blackhail, Merritt Ganlow, and the clan guide Inigar Stoop. All including the women and Inigar Stoop were heavily armed. Spears bristled in their couchings, and greatswords, hammers, and more than a few war axes weighed across backs. Ballic the Red’s great yew longbow was braced and ready in its case, his side quiver fat with the red arrows that gave him his name. Shor Gormalin carried only a shortsword. It was all the soft-spoken swordsman ever needed.

  Then, as Raif and Drey stood on the ridge, side by side, breathless, their exposed faces cooling in the sleety air, the troop of two dozen parted and through their midst, wearing a cloak made of black wolf fur that rippled in the wind like a living, breathing thing, rode Mace Blackhail high atop Dagro Blackhail’s blue roan.

  Drey gasped.

  Raif looked hard into Mace Blackhail’s face. And didn’t stop looking until Mace met his eyes. “Traitor.”

  The word brought the meet party to a halt.

  At his side, Raif heard Drey inhale sharply.

  Mace Blackhail didn’t blink. Bringing up a hand gloved in the finest lamb’s leather and dyed three times until it was the perfect shade of black, he made a settling motion to those behind him. He held Raif’s gaze for a time, sleet collecting in his oiled braids and sliding down his narrow nose and cheeks. When he spoke it was to Drey.

  “Where were you when the attack came?”

  Drey straightened his shoulders. “Raif and I were out at the lick, shooting hares.”

  “Where were you?” The hardness of Raif’s voice caused some in the party to draw breath. Raif hardly cared. Mace Blackhail was standing before him, mounted on Dagro Blackhail’s horse, unharmed, well fed, and acting like lord of the clan. Raif’s lore burned like a hot coal around his neck. While he and Drey had stayed at the camp taking care of the dead, Mace Blackhail had ridden back to the roundhouse in haste. It was the blue roan that had stamped its hooves in mud and hoarfrost and broken ice in newly set ponds, not some daring Maimed Raider or a lone Orrlsman tracking game.

  “I,” Mace Blackhail said, his voice equally as hard as Raif’s, “was seeing off a bear at Old Hoopers Lake. The beast broke bounds at first light, spooked the horses. Killed two dogs. I headed it off, chased it east along the rush, and speared its neck. Just as I was set to finish the kill, I heard sounds of fighting from the west. I rode back to the camp at full gallop, but it was too late. The last of the Clan Bludd raiders were already riding away.”

  As he spoke the last sentence, Mace looked down and touched the pouch containing ground guidestone that hung from one of the many leather belts around his waist. Others in the party did likewise.

  After a moment Drey did the same. The muscles in his throat worked a moment, and then he repeated softly, “Clan Bludd?”

  Mace nodded. His wolf cloak gleamed like oil floating on the surface of a lake. “I saw the last of them. Caught sight of their spiked hammers and the red felt laid over their horses’ docks.”

  Ballic the Red shook his head gently, his callused archer’s hands caressing the red-tailed hawk fletchings on his arrows. “’Tis a bad thing for a clansman to do: make raid on another’s camp at first light.”

  Corbie Meese, Will Hawk, and others grunted in agreement.

  Raif spoke up to silence them. “The raid didn’t take place at first light. It happened at noon. I didn’t feel anything until—”

  Raif felt Drey’s fist hit the small of his back. Not an all-out punch, but enough to knock some wind from his lungs.

  “We don’t know when the raid took place, Raif,” Drey said over-loudly, clearly unhappy at having to speak out. “You got a bad notion in the pit of your stomach at noon, but who’s to say the raid didn’t happen before then?”

  “But, Drey—”

  “Raif!”

  In all his life Raif had never heard Drey speak his name with such harshness. Raif pressed his lips to a line. Heat flared in his cheeks.

  “Drey.” Raina Blackhail trotted her filly forward, coming to a halt a few paces ahead of her foster son, Mace. White smoke streamed from the filly’s nostrils. “What did you see when you came upon the campsite?”

  Raif watched Raina’s face as he waited for his brother to reply. Raina Blackhail’s gray eyes gave little away. Dagro Blackhail’s first wife, Norala, had died of lump fever, and Raina was his second wife, taken in the hope that she would provide the clan chief with a son to carry his name. After the second year of marriage, when Raina’s belly had failed to quicken, Dagro Blackhail had reluctantly taken a foster son, a child of his sister’s from Clan Scarpe. Mace had been eleven when he was brought to the Blackhail roundhouse, just eight years younger than his foster mother, Raina.

  Drey glanced at Raif before he answered Raina’s question. “We reached the camp about an hour before dark. We saw the dogs first, then Jorry Shank . . .” Drey hesitated. Orwin Shank, Jorry’s father, leaned forward in his saddle, his normally ruddy face as pale as if it were covered by a sheet of rime ice. “I don’t know how long he’d been there, lying in the scrub, but he was part frozen. And there wasn’t a lot of blood.”

  Mace Blackhail kicked the roan’s flank, then quickly pulled the reins, causing the gelding to stamp its feet and shake its head. “It’s just as I said,” he cried, easily controlling the agitated roan. “The Bluddsmen are arming themselves with hell-forged swords. They slip into a man’s gut as smooth as a spoon scooping bacon fat, then burn his insides hot and fast, roasting his flesh around the blade.”

  Merritt Ganlow swayed in her saddle. White-haired Inigar Stoop leaned over and steadied her, his pouches, horns, and slices of bone tinkling like shells as he moved.

  Raina Blackhail shot a warning glance to her foster son. “Drey hasn’t finished yet.”

  Drey shifted his weight. He wasn’t comfortable being the center of attention. “Well . . . I don’t know about hell-forged blades. I didn’t see any signs of burned flesh . . .”

  “Go on.” Raina Blackhail’s voice, while not gentle, was no longer as severe as it had been.

  “Raif and I went around the camp. We tended the bodies: Meth Ganlow, Halfmast—I mean Darri—Mallon Clayhorn, Chad . . . all the others.” Drey swallowed hard. Raif saw where his brother had gripped his oilskin so tight, the hide had split along the seam. “All the wounds looked the same: clean, not much blood, swiftly done. Broadswords or greatswords looked to have been used.”

  “It’s as Mace says,” murmured Ballic the Red. “Clan Bludd.”

  Many in the party nodded and murmured, “Aye.”

  Noticing that Raina Blackhail was one of the few who remained silent, Raif spoke up, addressing his words to her alone. “Clan Bludd aren’t the only ones who use greatswords. Clan Dhoone, Clan Croser, Clan Gnash”—Raif stopped himself from naming Clan Scarpe, Mace Blackhail’s birth clan—“Maimed Men: All use swords as their second weapons.”

  Mace Blackhail kicked the roan forward, coming to rest mere paces in front of Raif. “I said I saw Bluddsmen fleeing from the camp. Are you calling me a liar, Sevrance?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Raif saw Drey’s hand come up, meaning to pull him back. Raif stepped away, out of his brother’s reach. He would not be silenced in this. Gaze fixed firmly on Mace Blackhail’s narrow, gray-skinned face, Raif said, “Drey and I saw to our clansmen. We didn’t leave them out on the tundra for the carrion beasts to take them. We gave them blood rites, drew a guide circle around them. Paid them due respect. What
I am saying is that perhaps you were in too much of a hurry to get back to the roundhouse to pay retreating raiders fair due.”

  Drey swore, softly to himself.

  Everyone in the meet party had some reaction. Ballic the Red snorted, Merritt Ganlow let out a high, wailing cry, Corbie Meese sucked air between his wind-cracked lips, and the color returned to Orwin Shank’s face as quickly as if he had been sprayed with paint. Shor Gormalin moved his head in what might have been a nod of agreement.

  Raina Blackhail, almost as if she were afraid of showing any reaction, raised a gloved hand to her shoulders and pulled up her sable hood. Even though he was aware it was ridiculous to think of such a thing at such a time, Raif couldn’t help but be struck by Raina Blackhail’s beauty. She wasn’t pretty, not in the way that young girls like Lansa and Hailly Tanner were, but a kind of clear strength shone in her eyes that made everyone who saw her look twice. Raif wondered if she would ever marry again.

  Mace Blackhail waited until everyone was quiet before he spoke his reply. His eyes were as hard and bloody as frozen meat. A small movement sent his wolf fur rippling and served to expose the sword at his thigh. Ignoring Raif completely, he turned to face the meet party. “I won’t deny that I rode back as fast as I could—the boy has the truth of it there.” Mace paused, allowing a moment for the slight emphasis he had placed on the word boy to sink in.

  “I wasn’t thinking of the dead, I admit that. And I look back now and I’m ashamed of what I did. But when I saw my father’s body lying on the ground near the posts, his eyes frosting over even as I looked, all I could think of were the people at home. The Bluddsmen were heading east, yet what if they turned at the Muzzle and headed south instead? What if, whilst I stood deciding whether to pull my father’s body from the cold or hold blood rites where it lay, a second, greater party descended on the roundhouse itself? What if I returned to find that the same thing that had happened to my father and his camp had happened here in the Heart of Clan?”

  Mace Blackhail met the eyes of all who counted one by one. No one spoke, but some of the yearmen, including Orwin Shank’s two middle sons, shifted restlessly in their saddles.

  Sleet flew into the faces of the meet party, melting against the hot, flushed skins of Orwin Shank and his sons, Ballic the Red, Corbie Meese, and Merritt Ganlow, while clinging and staying partially frozen against the paler skins of Shor Gormalin, Raina Blackhail, and Will Hawk. All sleet that fell on Mace Blackhail turned to ice.

  Finally, after he had forced many in the meet party to look away, Mace Blackhail spoke again. “I am sorry for what I did, but I would not change it. I believe my father would have done the same. It was a choice between the living and the dead, and everyone here who knew and loved Dagro Blackhail must allow that his first thoughts would have been for his wife and his clan.”

  Ballic the Red nodded. Others followed. The tendons to either side of Corbie Meese’s powerful hammerman’s neck strained against his skin, and after a moment he looked down and murmured, “That’s the truth of it.” Raina Blackhail edged her filly round, so that her face was not visible to anyone in the party, including her foster son.

  Raif stood at Mace’s back. The bristling anger he had felt at being called a boy was now mixed with something else: a kind of slow-setting fear. Mace Blackhail was going to get away with it. Raif could see it on the faces of the meet party. Even Shor Gormalin, who never rushed to judgment on anything and was as careful about all decisions he made as he was with his blade around children, was nodding along with the rest. Didn’t he see? Didn’t he realize?

  And then there was Drey. Raif glanced over his shoulder, where Drey stood only a pace behind him, a handful of Raif’s oilskin twisting in his fist. If Raif meant to move forward to speak, Drey meant to pull him back.

  “Dagro’s body,” Raif hissed for Drey’s ears alone. “It wasn’t—”

  “What’s that you say, boy?” Mace Blackhail spun the roan around. Brass bow and hammer hooks jangled like bells. “Speak up. We are all clan here. What you say to one you must say to all.”

  Anger made Raif slam his elbow into Drey’s fist to free himself from his brother’s hold. Blood pumped into his temples as he spoke. “I said that Dagro Blackhail didn’t fall by the posts. We found him by the rack. He was butchering the black bear carcass when he was taken.”

  Mace Blackhail’s eyes darkened. His lips curled, and for half an instant Raif thought he was about to smile. Then just as quickly he wheeled back to face the meet party, stopping all hushed mutterings dead. “I moved the body from the posts to the drying rack. I didn’t want to leave my father outside the tent circle, exposed. It may have been foolish, but I wanted to him close to the fire.”

  “But the bear’s blood—”

  Drey grabbed Raif’s wrist with such force that bones cracked. “Enough, Raif. You’re hounding the wrong person. It’s the Dog Lord and his clan that we should be attacking. We both saw the grooved hoofprints made by the Bluddsmen, you can’t deny that. What else didn’t we see? In our way we acted just like Mace—doing things foolishly without thinking. We weren’t there, remember. We weren’t there. While we crept away in the dark to shoot ice hares, Mace was standing dogwatch over the camp. We can’t blame him for slipping bounds to see off a bear. Either one of us would have done the same.”

  Releasing his hold on Raif’s wrist, Drey turned and faced his brother full on. Although his expression was tense, there was an unmistakable appeal in his eyes. “Mace did the right thing coming back, Raif. He acted like clan, doing what any experienced clansman would have done. We acted like”—Drey hesitated, searching for the right words—“two brothers who had just lost their da.”

  Raif looked down, away from his brother’s gaze and the sharp looks of the meet party. Drey had just won himself a lot of respect in the eyes of the clan; Raif saw it in their eyes as they listened to him speak. Drey was the voice of reason, humbling himself, speaking with the same weighted reluctance that his father had before him. Raif swallowed, his throat suddenly sore. For a moment it had been just like listening to Tem.

  Glancing up, Raif saw Mace Blackhail watching him. His face was fixed in lines of concern, in keeping with the new mood Drey had set, in keeping also with rest of the meet party, who waited quietly, gravely, to see what Drey Sevrance’s troublesome younger brother would do. Raif’s gaze descended from Mace Blackhail’s face to his gloved hands, which flicked at the roan’s mane with all the satisfaction of a wolf switching its tail. Drey had done his work for him.

  Mace Blackhail’s gaze met Raif’s, and in that instant Raif knew he was dealing with something worse than a craven. Mace Blackhail had ridden to the badlands on a stocky, fat-necked cob, one of twenty dozen other yearmen, a fosterling from another, lesser clan. Now he sat on his foster father’s blue smoke roan, wearing a wolf cloak that reflected only rich shades of black, speaking with a newly modulated voice and manner, and adopting the clan chief’s authority along with his clothes and his horse.

  Raif massaged his wrist where Drey had gripped it. It wasn’t even worth asking how Mace had come to ride home upon his foster father’s gelding. Mace Blackhail wasn’t going to be caught out this late in the game.

  “Raif.”

  Drey’s voice brought Raif back to the meet. Looking into his brother’s face, Raif saw how tired his brother looked. It had been a long six days for both of them, yet it was Drey who had carried a greater portion of the weight on the journey back, Drey who had spent an extra hour each night stripping logs down to the heartwood so the fire wouldn’t burn out while they slept.

  “You two lads need to come inside.” It was Shor Gormalin, speaking in his soft burr. The small, fair-haired man, whose quiet ways disguised the fiercest swordsman in the clan, looked from Drey to Raif as he spoke. “You’ve walked a long way, and had a hard journey, and seen things that none here would wish to see. And no matter what was the right and wrong of what you did, you stayed and saw to our dead. For that alone we o
we you more than any here can repay.”

  Shor paused. Everyone in the meet party either nodded or murmured, “Aye.” A muffled sob escaped from Merritt Ganlow’s lips.

  “So come wi’ me now. Let Inigar grind some guidestone for your tines, and let us warm you and feed you and welcome you home. You are clan, and you are needed, and you must tell us of our kin.”

  The swordsman’s words had a profound effect on the faces of the meet party. Orwin Shank closed his eyes and held a fist to his heart. Seeing their father’s actions, the two Shank yearmen did likewise. Other yearmen followed, and within seconds the entire meet party sat high on their saddles, eyes closed or cast down, paying due respect to those who were dead. Raina Blackhail trotted her horse over to Shor Gormalin’s side and laid her hand on the swordsman’s arm.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Raif saw Mace Blackhail look up and take note of the contact. His eyes caught and reflected a thin break of sunlight, and for an instant they shone yellow like a wolf’s.

  Forcing aside his unease, Raif stepped toward his brother. Drey was waiting for him and brought up his arm straightaway, wrapping it around Raif’s shoulder. He didn’t speak, and Raif was glad of it. There was little choice here: Raif loved his brother and respected Shor Gormalin too much to hold out against them.

  Shor Gormalin vaulted from his horse with the speed and agility that never failed to surprise Raif, even though he had seen the swordsman do so many times before. A moment later Corbie Meese also dismounted, and the two clansmen came forward, offering Drey and Raif their mounts. Mace Blackhail trotted his horse down the slope, positioning himself to be head rider when the meet party turned for home.

  Shor Gormalin’s blue eyes looked straight at Raif as he handed him his reins. “’Tis a good thing you did, lad, you and your brother. We are Blackhail, the first of all clans. We must be and act as one in this.”

  Raif took the reins. Although he didn’t say it outright, Shor Gormalin spoke of war.