by J. V. Jones
It was hard to focus on the spearmen, harder still to call them to him in the split seconds when the way was clear. He loosed one arrow and it went wide, glancing off a Bluddsman’s hammerguard. Cursing, he tried to control the fast beating of his heart. Rory Cleet howled as a spear ripped along his thigh. For a moment Raif saw white lines of bared sinew and bone, then blood welled over Rory’s flesh and everything turned red. Face pale and shiny with sweat, hand pressed to the wound, Rory wheeled his horse.
Raif drew his bow, ready to let an arrow loose the moment Rory broke free and cleared the way. The spearman who had inflicted the wound moved forward for a second blow. He was armed for heavy marching, not for war, and wore a breastpiece of elkhide boiled in wax. His leather-bound topnotch swung like a sling as Raif caught his heart in his sights. A strong heartbeat slammed against his mind, shocking like a physical blow, knocking all thoughts clean away. Raif didn’t need them: His eye knew to hold the target and his fingers knew when to release the string, and it was over in less than an instant.
Nausea bent him double as the spearman fell. His vision blurred, and sour acids from his stomach burned his throat. He lost his grip on the bow and let it drop to the snow beneath him, not trusting himself to rock sideways and catch it as it fell.
He shook his head, concentrated hard on keeping his seat. Killing men wasn’t the same as game. He could do it, but it wasn’t the same.
“Sevrance! Pick up your bow and ride down the survivors! Now!”
Raif flinched at the harshness of the voice. It sounded as if it were coming from behind him, but he knew now wasn’t a good time to turn in the saddle and look. It took all he had to sit his horse.
A horse and rider bore down through the pines. Raif saw a hail of kicked-up snow, then felt something jab against the base of his spine.
“I said, go and run down the survivors.”
Mace Blackhail. The new-made Hail chief. Here? Raif’s thoughts came in clumsy lumps. How had he managed to catch up?
“Craw. Go and pull Drey and Bitty from the road. I need all three of you to ride east through the woods and pick off survivors. I’ll have no Bludd breeders and bitches walking free from this ambush. Now go.”
Raif spat to clean the metal from his mouth as Craw Bannering headed down the slope. Pulling himself to his full saddle height, he turned to look at the Wolf. Mace Blackhail’s eyes were the color of frozen urine, his lips a hook of pale flesh. Wearing a cloak of slate gray fisher fur over a mail coat inset with wolf teeth, he sat high atop the blue roan, contemplating Raif. After a moment his jaws sprang apart. “I am your chief. You have taken First Oath. Do my bidding.”
Raif flinched. He wished his thoughts were clearer. As he reached down to collect his bow, Mace Blackhail kicked the roan forward, ramming the filly’s belly and trampling Raif’s bow underfoot. The filly caught the sharp end of a spur along her shoulder and reared up, squealing in pain. Raif fought to keep his seat, pulling hard on the horse’s mouth. By the time he had calmed her, the blue roan had stamped the bow into splinters.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Mace said, starting down the slope. “Use your halfsword on the runaways instead.”
Raif watched him go. The edges of his vision were blurred, and he could still feel the spearman’s heartbeat rattling away inside his skull.
As soon as Mace Blackhail reached the road, he began working to take control of the battle. He moved quickly, and although he wasn’t a powerful fighter like Corbie Meese, Bullhammer, or Drey, he was clever with his sword. Within a minute he had taken down one of the three remaining spearmen.
Drey and Bitty were slow to pull off the road, both clearly unhappy at the order to hunt down runaways. Seeing them move into the trees, Raif kicked the filly after them. He didn’t spare a glance for his ruined bow. It was a relief to have it gone.
The war wagon collapsed inward as Raif rode past it, sucking air from his lungs. The heat was fierce. Bits of flaming matter floated through the stone pines like wasps. Trees shivered as they passed. One of the Bludd dogs ran across the filly’s path, howling and frothing at the mouth, its black-and-orange coat alight. Raif found its pain surprisingly easy to ignore. He hardly knew what he was doing. Thoughts came and then slipped from his head, and no matter how many times he swallowed and spat, the copper taint of blood stayed in his mouth.
He nearly rode past the first woman. Pressed against the trunk of an oldgrowth pine, she held still until almost the last moment, then lost her nerve and broke into a run. If she hadn’t moved, he would not have seen her. A long braid of golden hair thumped against her back as she sprinted away from the road. Her cloak was dark red with gold stitching around the hem, and her leather softboots had been sewn and dyed to match. She ran fast but straight, failing to take advantage of the trees, and the filly soon outpaced her. Raif drew Tem’s halfsword. “You have it,” Drey had said that first evening when they’d returned to the roundhouse. “I have his coat and his lore. It’s only fitting you have his sword.”
Raif rode the woman down. The thrill of the chase woke something in him, and he cut the air with his sword, growing accustomed to its balance and reach. A drift of new snow collapsed beneath the woman’s weight as she stepped across a shallow draw, causing her to sink and lose her footing. Hearing the filly closing distance, she turned to face man and horse. Long strands of golden hair had worked free of her braid, framing a face hot with fright and exertion.
Seeing her, Raif realized she wasn’t a woman at all, just a girl, a year or so younger than he himself. Her pale eyes widened as he raised his sword. Shivering in small bursts, she brought a hand to her throat as he approached. A deer lore was fastened about her neck on a strip of birch bark. Her knuckles were black with soot and smoke.
Tem’s sword grew heavy in Raif’s hand. Girls at home used birch bark for their lores. It was said to bring luck in finding a husband.
The girl shrank back, closing her fist around her lore. She had a small dimpled scar above her lip, the sort of mark that was left by a dog bite. When she noticed Raif’s gaze upon it, her hand moved to cover it up.
Raif knew then that he would not kill her. She was too much like the girls at home, thinking that whenever someone looked at her it was always to find fault. Ridiculously, the scar made him want to kiss her.
Unable to look the girl in the eye any longer, he turned the filly and rode away. Bludd breeders and bitches, Mace had called them. What words would he use for the children?
A series of high-pitched screams led Raif to a clearing where Drey, Bitty Shank, and Craw Bannering had rounded up two dozen women and children. All were dressed finely, in thick wool cloaks, sable hoods, and softskin boots. Some women carried babes at their breasts, others hid small children behind their skirts. One woman, a tall matron with a braid that reached her hips and eyes as blue as ice, stood proud and stared her attackers down.
Realizing that Drey intended to cause no harm to the women, simply capture them, Raif exhaled. He felt light-headed with relief. The madness of the day was finally coming to an end. All he wanted to do was roll in his blanket and sleep. He didn’t want to think about the Bludd spearman, or the girl with the dog scar, or Toady Walker’s horse-trampled body.
Chest shaking with exhaustion, head throbbing to a dead man’s heartbeat, Raif trotted over to join his brother. The Bludd women watched him, their faces crusted with soot and snow, their hands forming knots against their skirts.
Drey’s face was grim. “Pull up your swordarm.”
Before Raif could obey the order, Mace Blackhail broke through the trees on the roan. His broadsword rested against his dogskin pants, a thin line of liver blood bleeding along the blade. He looked first at Raif, then Drey. “What are you waiting for? I said slay them.”
No muscle on Drey’s face moved. From the near side of the glade, Bitty looked his way, waiting to see what Drey would do.
“They killed our chief in cold blood,” Mace Blackhail said, walking the roan forw
ard, his yellow-and-black eyes fixed solely on Drey. “They slaughtered your father in his tent. Bitty’s brothers were taken where they stood. And just five days ago, they sent cowl-men into our woods to slay our women and children on home ground. Yes, they shot Shor Gormalin, but don’t be mistaken: If Raina or Effie had been riding that trail, it would have been they who rode home dead.
“Bludd broke faith first, Drey. Not us. If we let these bitches and their litters go, then both our fathers’ deaths go unavenged.” Mace Blackhail wiped his blade clean against his pants as he spoke. “We are Blackhail, the first amongst clans, and our chief’s life is worth a hundred of their women’s.”
Mace Blackhail stared at Drey with such force, it was as if he were physically pushing against him. Drey didn’t blink or move, but something in his face changed. Raif couldn’t tell what his brother was thinking, didn’t know what the sudden lack of light in his eyes meant, but words Drey had spoken on the journey home from the badlands slipped into Raif’s mind like cold poison.
We’ll make Clan Bludd pay for what they did, Raif. I swear it.
Raif had no way of knowing whether Mace Blackhail saw the answer he wanted in Drey’s face or not, but something made Mace move. Kicking bronze spurs into the roan’s belly, he began the charge. Light ran down his newly cleaned sword like water, gleaming with all the cold colors from white to blue. He howled as he rode, baring his teeth and drawing low in the saddle like something not quite human. The Bludd women and children began to run, scrambling awkwardly through knee-deep snow.
Afterward, when he thought back on it, Raif realized that by forcing them to run, Mace Blackhail changed them from wives and children and turned them into game instead. Drey Sevrance, Bitty Shank, and Craw Bannering could not have slain the women and children where they stood—Raif believed that completely. He had to. But Mace Blackhail had all the inborn cunning of his lore. A wolf hunts nothing that does not move, and when words failed him, Mace Blackhail fell back on instinct, changing slaughter to a chase.
Raif felt its pull. Tired and headsick as he was, part of him wanted to go after them, run them down, hack them at the knees with his sword, and bring them to ground. He wanted it so badly, the saliva in his mouth ran clean. The children shrieked and cried, herding close to their mothers as if somehow they could save them. Clumsy things, they were, foolishly heading into thicker drifts, bereft of even an animal’s sense to pull out from the snow and head for the shelter of the trees. The women were worse, stopping to pull one another up when they stumbled or fell behind, lifting children too heavy to carry. They acted like a flock of mindless sheep. Covered in snow as they were, they even looked like sheep.
When Bitty Shank rode alongside a thin mewling child whose cheeks were showing the first yellow blush of frostbite and plowed his blade into the child’s shoulder, forcing him under his horse, Raif felt a hot surge of excitement take his chest. The thumping in his head changed to a drumbeat, and the weariness in his bones shifted into something else. He wanted to join Bitty and take his share of the game.
The sight of Drey stopped him dead: Drey with his hammer whirling above his head, his eyes sunk deep into their sockets, and his lips pulled back to his gums. Drey. He was chasing a young mother and her two small children, and every muscle on his face and neck pressed against his skin like bone. Raif felt shocked to his core. His raven lore cooled against his skin, quick as red-hot metal plunged into snow.
Sobered as surely as if someone had slapped him in the face, Raif took an arrow from his case and reached to his saddlebag for his bow. He was going to bring down Drey’s horse, heart-kill the beast, make it drop from under him.
Gone. The bow wasn’t there. Raif swore as he remembered what Mace Blackhail had done to it. He couldn’t understand why he’d just sat by and let him do it. What was wrong with him? Why hadn’t he got angry? Raif shook his head. It didn’t matter. He was angry now.
Kicking the filly into a gallop, he cut across the glade. A killing field of sounds filled his ears: terrible wails and screams and panting, the crack of severed bones, and the thick liquid gurgle of blades yanked free of flesh. Children rushed before him, bare hands clutching at their hair and faces, hoods and mittens lost in the chase. Mace Blackhail rode through them like the shadow of a Stone God, forcing them to move, flee, run. Any who didn’t were cut down and then trampled, their bodies driven deep into the snow.
“Drey!” Raif screamed at the top of his voice as he drew close to the cut bank where his brother had cornered the young mother and her children. “Stop!”
Drey looked round. Momentarily his hammer slowed in his hand. He looked at Raif a long moment, a trickle of saliva rolling down his chin, then he turned and drove his hammer into the side of the woman’s face. A sickening crack split the air as the woman’s neck broke and her head twisted to a place where no amount of sideways glances would ever take it.
The two small children screamed. Tearing and clutching at each other, heads and shoulders knocking together, they tried to squeeze themselves into one. A shudder worked through Raif’s body, rattling his bones like pebbles in a jar. Wrapping the reins around his fingers, he bore down on his brother, setting his filly on a path to smack into Drey’s horse. The filly turned at the last moment to save herself, and Raif’s shoulders slammed into Drey’s side. Drey was knocked forward in the saddle, his hammer losing momentum and crashing into his thigh. Furious, Drey shoved Raif with all his might.
“Get away from me! You heard Mace Blackhail. We weren’t first to break faith.”
Raif smashed the heel of his hand into Drey’s hammer arm. “Run!” he called to the children. “Run!”
The oldest child simply stared at him, and the younger one sat down in the snow and began shaking his mother’s arm as if she were asleep and needed waking. Raif wheeled the filly around, preparing to scare the children into running. As he dug his heels into horseflesh, a fist of pain exploded in his lower back. Breath rushed from his lungs in a harsh gust, leaving a sucking emptiness in his chest. His vision shrank to two dots, and he grasped at air and bridle leather as he fell into a tunnel of spiraling darkness where the snow was as hard as glass.
He came to. A spasm of pain ripped along his backbone, sharp as if someone had gouged a rusted nail down his spine. Rolling over, he coughed blood into the snow. Something warm pushed against his ear, forcing him to twist back and confront whatever it was: the filly, her great wet nostrils pulling in his breath, testing if he were still alive. Raif raised a hand and pushed her nose away. The effort cost him. He lost seconds as he dealt with the pain. Slowly his eyes grew accustomed to the glare of snow. Three dark forms, impacted in the snowdrift like rocks, broke the line of perfect whiteness. A pitifully small amount of blood stained the surrounding snow.
Raif closed his eyes. His heart grew unbearably light in his chest. Both children had been younger than Effie.
Sounds far behind him told of a hunt still running. Those still alive had little breath to scream, and hoarse cries and sobs were almost drowned out by the noise of hooves churning snow. Pushing himself up on his elbows, Raif caught sight of Corbie Meese and Ballic the Red entering the clearing from the west. Blood had turned their horses and armor black. When they saw what was happening they exchanged a small, worried glance. Hope surged in Raif’s chest. Corbie and Ballic were good men; they would do what was right.
“Stop her! She’s getting away!” The call came from Mace Blackhail, who rode across the glade toward the two men, chasing a heavyset Bluddswoman before him. Mace Blackhail could have taken the woman himself—she was struggling in the snow less than thirty paces ahead of him—but that wasn’t what he wanted. Raif knew that at once. The Wolf needed to share the responsibility for the killing. He needed the two senior clansmen to run with his pack.
Raif watched for a while, long enough to see Corbie and Ballic succumb to the lure of the chase and move swiftly to head off the enemy that Mace Blackhail was intent on driving toward them, then turned
away. Softly he called for the filly. Leaning heavily against her, he rose and brushed himself clean of snow. His back burned. When he probed it with his fingers, tears filled his eyes. At the very least he would have a hammer-size bruise there tomorrow.
Not trusting himself to mount, he took the filly by the reins and led her northwest from the glade. He had to get away. Suddenly he didn’t know his brother or his clan.
FOURTEEN
Escape
Imay stop by and visit the Knife tonight. What’s it to you? Katia’s words echoed in Ash’s mind. The tiny dark-haired maid had said them four hours earlier, and Ash stood in the shadows behind her chamber door and waited to see if they were true. Her back ached from standing still for so long, but she didn’t dare risk moving away. Barring opening the door and checking for herself, listening was the only way she had of knowing for sure if Marafice Eye had left his post. She didn’t want the Knife catching her peeking around the door. It would only make him suspicious. No. Better by far to keep her position and wait.
Katia has been telling me how your charcoal brazier was choked with ashes the other night, almost-daughter. You haven’t been burning anything upon it, have you? I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how very dangerous such a thing would be.
Ash shivered. Penthero Iss had visited her room late last night, and although he’d said many different things on many different subjects, she was sure all he had really come to say was that he knew about the extra cinders in the brazier. He was sly like that. What the whole thing really meant was that from now on he would be watching her more closely, as he was now well aware that she was up to something improper. Ash cursed Katia under her breath. Cinders in the brazier? Was there no secret, no matter how inane, that the girl wouldn’t tell?
