by J. V. Jones
Ash had little choice but to give the mule-eared horse the reins. Snow sprayed Raif’s chest as the horse took off at a fair gallop. Raif watched for a moment, satisfying himself that Ash could handle riding through snow at speed, then broke into a run himself. His body was not prepared for the shock of swift motion, and his legs trembled as they took his weight. Ribs broken and then partially mended made creaking noises as he lurched from step to step. His own weakness angered him, and he plowed through the snow, kicking up showers of blue crystals and sods of frozen earth.
Ash and the gelding pulled far ahead. Winds were already working to shift loose snow southward, and snow tails blew from ridges and high ground. Noise in the air increased, and the howling, ripping lowing of the storm buffeted Raif’s ears as he ran. The Wolf River meandered due north here, where it ran shallow, feeding a dozen salmon pools, wearing riverstone down into green sand, and forming a defensible line around the Banhold’s southern reach. In a way, Raif was glad of the storm. Any other day and clansmen, iron miners, and trappers would be moving back and forth between the Banhouse and the hills.
Raif’s hands and face burned as he ran. Beneath the goatskin gloves, his fingers swelled in a steambath of trapped sweat. By the time he caught up with Ash he’d bitten off the gloves and tucked them under his belt. Every breath he took pushed against his mending ribs as if it might snap them clean in two.
Ash had dismounted and was leaning against the spine of a thirty-year spruce. She’d reached the trees a quarter ahead of him and had had enough time to brush down the horse, shake the snow from her cloak, and hang her hood to air over the bottommost limb of the tree. She grinned as he approached. “I was found on a day like this,” she said. “White weather suits me well enough.”
He could not disagree with her. Her eyes sparkled like sea ice. Hunkering in the snow, he fought to catch his breath. Ash had taken one of the tin bowls from the roundhouse and packed it with fresh snow. The snow was half-melted, and he wondered where she’d nursed it for the past fifteen minutes to warm it so quickly.
“What now?” she asked.
Raif glanced through the towering spires of black spruce, up toward the sky. “We keep moving west. We can’t afford to lose half a day to a storm.”
She nodded briskly. “You need to ride for a while.”
He would have liked to protest, to tell her that he was a clansman, and a clansman never rode when a woman walked, but his ribs were creaking and his hands were on fire, and even the thought of standing upright made his thighs ache. To save his pride he gave her an order. “Pull some fisher meat from the sack. We need to eat before we move on.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t care. You can’t rely on what your stomach tells you from now on. Every time we rest, you eat. You’ll starve twice as quickly out here in the clanholds as you would in the walled-and-shored haven of Spire Vanis.”
Ash looked at him sharply, yet she did as she was told, taking a strip of fisher meat and chewing it with venom.
Raif almost laughed, but a patch of fresh blood on the gelding’s bandage caught his eye and he left her to tend to it.
Mule Ears suffered Raif’s ministrations with the lethargy of an old horse who had seen and done everything before. As Raif cleaned the wound and felt for frostbite, he found himself thinking of Moose. He hoped the gray gelding was on his way home to Blackhail and Orwin Shank, not traveling north to Dhoone with the Dog Lord. He wanted that man to have nothing of his.
Ash wandered over to watch him as he rewrapped the gelding’s leg. The wind tugged at her cloak, making the rust-colored wool stream behind her like a banner. A Clan Frees banner, he thought senselessly.
“Earlier, when we were out in the open, you said Mace Blackhail rode to the badlands with his father. So why wasn’t he killed along with the rest?”
It hadn’t taken her very long to get to the heart of the matter. Tying the final knot in the gelding’s bandage with double the force necessary, Raif said, “Mace claimed he was off shooting a black bear when the raiders came. Said he missed them by seconds, and that once he saw his foster father’s body lying in the snow, the only thing he could think of was riding home to warn the clan.” Raif was surprised at how easy it was to tell it. “By the time Drey and I got back to the roundhouse, he had everyone believing that Clan Bludd had carried out the raid. Lies. All lies. He didn’t know anything about the bodies, where they lay, what wounds they’d taken. He left before the raid ever started. Rode home on his foster father’s horse.”
“But you and Drey must have made the clan see the truth.”
Raif smiled bitterly, the skin on his face pulling tight. “You haven’t met the Hail Wolf. He was born a Scarpeman. His tongue moves faster than his blade.”
“If Bludd didn’t carry out the raid, then why didn’t the Dog Lord simply deny it?”
“You’ve met him. What do you think?”
Ash pushed a hand through her hair, thinking. “Pride. He liked the idea of taking credit for such a thing.”
Raif tasted the bitterness in his mouth. “Spoken like the Dog Lord himself.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes.” Raif stood. “What did he tell you about me?”
She didn’t blink, though the silver in her eyes quickened. “He said you slaughtered women and children along the Bluddroad. He called you a murderer.”
Raif made no answer. He would not speak against his brother or his clan.
When it became clear to her that he was not going to deny the charge, Ash gathered her cloak about her and began to make her way west through the trees.
Raif watched her go. New snow had begun to fall, and the wind sent the heavy white flakes swirling in the spaces between the trees. After a few minutes Ash’s figure was lost to the storm, and Raif mounted the gelding and wound through the spruces to catch her.
The storm followed them deep into the taiga, dislodging snow caches from branches, bending saplings double, and roaring like a river over rocks. Riding took more concentration than walking, as ruts and sinkholes hidden beneath the snow were a constant danger to the horse. Drifts were impossible to predict in unsettled snow and forced many stops while Ash ran ahead to test the snow depth with a whip-thin stick of spruce. In the end, both he and Ash decided to walk, heads bent low against the wind.
Light faded rapidly, and the taiga shimmered blue and gray as it darkened. Raif became aware of Drey’s tine banging against his hip from step to step. It seemed to weigh more than it should, and soon he could think of nothing at all except the piece of horn and the powdered guidestone within it. Please gods, let Drey be all right, he thought. Let the wound heal cleanly, and let it not cause him pain.
It was hard to turn his mind to finding shelter for the night. Part of him wanted to walk and walk and never stop. Only the thought of a warm fire, of holding his hands above yellow flames and feeling their heat upon his face, was enough to tempt him away from the storm.
No one lived in the taiga in winter. Trappers, woodsmen, and loggers spent spring and summer in the woods but retreated to the shelter of stone houses in the cold months. They often built summer huts, but Raif didn’t hold out much hope of finding one in white weather. He settled upon a grove of newgrowth pines occupying a narrow flood basin and set about stripping the soft lower branches from the surrounding trees to use as thatching for the den. Ash saw to Mule Ears, then came to help him fix the crude thatch roof over the frame of bent newgrowth he’d erected. The wind drove against them as they worked, tugging whole branches from their grip. Every time Raif closed his hands around a shoot to strip it, pain made him catch his breath.
The storm was dying by the time they got the shelter to hold firm. Raif’s mitts were sticky with white resin, and beneath the goatskin gloves his fingers were raw. Ash’s hood was no longer protecting her head and lay against her back, filled with snow. She was breathing with quick shallow breaths so Raif ordered her to rest while he built a long fire ac
ross the entrance to the den. The fact that she didn’t protest, merely sat on the pine needle floor without saying a word, worried him. The skin around her eyes looked bruised.
He packed the fire loosely in his haste. Built well, a long fire could burn through the night, with timbers packed on poles so they could drop into the flames as the poles burned down. Yet Raif was more worried about Ash than he was about a full night’s warmth, and he kindled the fire quickly, blowing to make it take.
Shredding the fisher meat with the bald knife, he set about turning snowmelt into a stock. He talked to Ash as he worked, anxious that she stay awake long enough to eat and drink. It was winter and it was cold, so he spoke of spring, telling her about the Hailhold after first thaw, about the carpets of white heather that pushed up overnight and the rings of darkwood violets that flowered amid the melting snow. He told her about the birds, about the blue herons that stood as tall as men, and the horned owls that could take to the air with full-grown rabbits in their beaks, and the little dun-colored swifts that hung upside down from branches like bats.
He didn’t know how long he spoke, only that once he started he kept remembering other things that seemed important to tell her. Ash listened in silence, and after a time her breathing grew shallow and her eyes began to flicker, then close. Raif took the stock from the fire. Leaning over, he touched her arm. “Here. Drink this before you sleep.”
She took the bowl from him and held it to her chest, letting the steam roll over her face. After what seemed like a very long time she said, “I don’t believe what the Dog Lord said about what happened on the Bluddroad. I don’t think you killed anyone in cold blood.”
Raif nodded. He told himself he felt no better for hearing her say it, yet it wasn’t quite the truth.
They spoke no more after that and ate and drank in silence, the flames of the long fire dancing before them and the tail end of the storm sending gusts of winds to rattle the den. Ash fell asleep while Raif was nursing the last of the stock in his cracked and aching hands. He covered her as best he could, making sure that no part of her skin came in contact with snow, and then settled himself down before the fire.
He could not sleep. He was weary beyond telling, yet he could see the night sky through the flames. A moonless, starless night in midwinter; not the sort of night a sane man would choose to be out in. Then perhaps he wasn’t sane, for Raif found himself rising from his place by the fire, pulling on his goatskin gloves and leather boots, and leaving the warmth and dryness of the den. It took him less than a minute to find a wedge of greenstone to his liking: jagged and shot with lead. Brushing it clean of snow, he entered the dark cathedral of the forest. The storm had passed and the night animals were feeding and he was Watcher of the Dead.
The Listener woke to the hiss of the runners. His heart beat like a snow goose in his chest. His old mouth was as dry as tanned hide, and his eyes, once a dark brown color and now turned blue with snow blindness, took a very long time before they allowed him even the dimmest view of the surrounding world. The sky above the sled was dark and full of stars: The long night of winter had begun.
He’d been having the old dream again, the one where Harannaqua guided him to a dark place where the old Sull Kings were waiting. Lyan Summerled and Thay Blackdragon and Lann Sword-breaker were there, along with the Sull Queen Isane Rune. Not his kings, the Listener reminded himself, yet they haunted him all the same. They were not dead, not truly, for flesh still hung to their bones in places, and they moved like men, not ghosts. Isane’s smile had been beautiful to behold until the instant her spread lips parted, revealing a mouth of bloody teeth. Lyan Summerled, he who had once been the most glorious and golden of all kings, had laid a skinned hand upon the Listener’s shoulder and breathed a single word in his ear.
Soon.
Sadaluk shivered. “Nolo,” he said, turning around and calling to the man who drove the sled. “We must stop and turn back. This is not a good night to ask for blessing from the god who lives beneath the sea ice.”
Nolo’s brown face registered not one mote of surprise; perhaps he had felt the badness, too. Calling to his team, he pulled on the standers and began driving the sled in a great turning circle on the gray shore-fast ice. Sadaluk, sitting at the front of the sled, wrapped in bearhides and wearing a squirrel cap, watched as the dogs slowed and changed their course. They were fat dogs—Nolo fed them too much—yet the Listener felt less inclined to criticize now than when he and Nolo had set off. Overfed dogs were a sign of a kind heart, and after the darkness of his unasked-for dream, the Listener found much to value in the kindness of a man who loved his dogs as if they were kin.
The sled, formed from a ladder of driftwood and horn and bound with seal sinew, skimmed to a halt as it completed its turn. The dogs, harnessed together in a line, broke formation and began worrying on their traces. The edges had been filed from their teeth, so they could do little but suck and gnaw.
Nolo pulled off his heavy sled gloves and walked to where the Listener sat. He was out of breath, and his chest rose and fell rapidly. “Are you ill, Sadaluk? You were quiet for a very long time.”
The Listener shook his head. “I dreamed,” he said.
Silence followed. Nolo looked guilty, as if his sled were to blame for the dream. The Listener saw no reason to argue otherwise: Perhaps if the sled hadn’t run so smoothly and silently, he might well have stayed awake. Instead he said, “Once, many lifetimes ago when the winter lasted many seasons and the Gods Lights burned red, our people had to eat their skins and tents to survive. All the dogs were slaughtered. Mothers killed their children to relieve them of the hunger that ate from inside out. Old men like me walked out onto the sea ice and never came back. Young couples, newly wed, sealed themselves in their ice houses and starved in each other’s arms.
“By the time the warm winds came and the sea ice broke, only twelve were left alive. One man, Harannaqua, who had lost his wife and his three children, was angry at the gods for not sending a warning. We could have stored more food if we had known, he cried. We could have eaten less at summer’s end.
“The gods listened to him, for even though they hate flesh men pointing out their failings, they knew that he was right. From this day forth you shall be the warning, Harannaqua of Four Losses, they replied. We will strip your body from you and carry your soul with us, and whenever hard times come to the Ice Trappers we will send you down to warn them in their dreams. And so the gods took him and kept him and bound him to this task.”
The Listener looked sharply at Nolo. A cloud of frosted breath lay between them like a third man. “Yes, Nolo of the Silent Sled, today I dreamt of Harannaqua, him and four kings.”
Nolo nodded slowly. He thought long before he spoke. “What must we do, Sadaluk?”
The Listener made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Watch ourselves. Be vigilant. Feed our fat dogs less.” The words made Nolo blush, but Sadaluk found little satisfaction in his young friend’s distress. He was afraid, and the dream worried him, and he had spoken from fear and spite. “Run the sled.”
The dogs took much whipping and cursing before they would re-form themselves into a line. Nolo had to put on a harness and pull like one of them to remind the beasts what they must do. Sadaluk drew his bearskin close as the sled shuddered into motion.
Four Sull kings. Not his kings, he told himself again, as if that could make it so. They shared blood, but that blood was old, old. Blood could thin to water over the space of thirteen thousand years. True, the Ice Trappers and the Sull came from the same place beyond the Night Sea, but that was far in the past. The great glaciers had receded, deserts had been baked to glass, and iron mountains had risen from seeds of rock and stone. All this and more had come to pass since the Sull and the Ice Trappers had once called themselves kinsmen. Why then should their fates still be linked?
The Listener frowned at the stars, the snow, the shimmering blue landscape of sea ice. Where were the Far Riders? A raven had been sent two
moons past; they should be here by now.
This was their fate unraveling, not his.
“Lash the dogs, Nolo. Lash them!” The Listener tried to set aside his dreams as he watched Nolo punish his team. Eloko had promised to show him the third secret use for whale blubber on his return and had set her stone pot to warming over the lamp even as he and Nolo packed the sled. Sadaluk had liked the first two secret uses very much, and he could think of nothing more pleasant than being introduced to the third. Yet even as he tried to conjure Eloko’s wide, smooth face in his mind’s eye, the face of another came to him.
Thay Blackdragon, the Night King, looked at him with eyes that were the perfect Sull blue: dark as the sky at midnight and shot with veins of ice. Strips of flesh hung from his cheeks, and the Listener could see white ridges of bone beneath. He was riding a horse that was all shadow, a dark beast made of muscle and black oil that quivered with every touch of its rider’s hand. Thay Blackdragon pulled the reins, and the beast opened its mouth, revealing a bit of razored steel. The Night King smiled as Isane Rune had before him.
Soon, he hissed. Our thousand years have all but passed.
For the first time in his hundred-year life, the Listener didn’t know if he was sleeping or wide awake.
FORTY-SEVEN
Clothes off a Dead Man’s Back
They were on the move before dawn, walking through the hills and valleys of snow that had formed around the bases of pines like skirts of spent wax around candles. Light came slowly, sparkling for brief moments on pine needles scored with hoarfrost and the whites of Ash’s eyes and teeth. A wind, soft and cold, blew south. Somewhere beyond the horizon a ptarmigan screamed at a rival who drew too near to its roost.
Raif carried the two fox carcasses slung over his back. They were gutted but not skinned and were now freezing rapidly in the cold dry air. He would have liked to strap them to Mule Ears’ cantle, but the old gelding had no liking for the smell of fox.
