A Sword from Red Ice

FORTY-SIX Aftermath

Raif let Addie Gunn help him out of the tent. "Go," he said to the cragsman once they were a short distance from the camp. "I need to piss."

Addie frowned like he didn't much believe this. Given the subject matter he could hardly object. "Here," he said, holding out the simple oak staff he used for walking. "Take the stick."

Raif took the stick.

"Don't piss too long," Addie warned before leaving.

Pushing the butt of the stick into the snow and pine needles of the forest floor, Raif waited for him to be gone. It was warm again today and the snow was loose and full of holes. You could smell the earth, the minerals and tannins and rotting leaves. Black flies and mosquitoes were hatching. Something buzzed close to his ear, but he couldn't trust himself to swat it away. He needed the stick more than he had realized. Half of his weight had sunk upon it. It was a good piece of wood, smoothly sanded and sturdy. It vibrated only because the person who held it was shaking; it had been designed to transfer force.

When he saw Addie return to the tent he felt free to breathe and slump further into the stick. Addie was a good man and a good friend, but Raif needed a break from his watching. He needed to think.

Spying a rock in the shade of the cedars he decided it looked like a fine place to sit and rest. The hardest part of getting there was yanking the stick out of the ground. He moved slowly, aware of the heaviness of his body and his legs' inability to bear it. The pain in his chest, the depth of it, was something he would not think about. Enough worry had been spent there. No more today.

It took him a long time to reach the rock. The sun moved while he was shambling from foot to foot, rising high in the pale and clear sky and stealing away the shade. Raif found the rock's appeal undiminished. It was a big spur of sandstone, flaking and chalky, and so deeply undercut it looked like a boulder. Maybe it was a boulder. Raif wondered what was happening to his mind.

Sitting down was a more challenging discipline than walking and he found himself awkward at it Several tiring moments followed where he attempted to lever his weight with the stick. That didn't work, and the best he could manage was a barely controlled drop.

Won't be getting up any time soon, he realized, settling down on the cool and slightly damp stone. His heart was beating swiftly, accelerated and under strain, and his legs were shaking in fierce jumps. He could not make them stop.

Below he saw the camp and counted all five clarified hide tents and the animal corral. It was strange to see them in this place, this hillside of giant cedars and white pines. They must have cleared some timber to make the campsite; saplings and yearlings from the looks of things. Addie carried a hand adze, but its small rounded head was insufficient for logging. That meant one of the lamb brothers possessed a decent ax. It was disconcerting to think of them chopping up timber. They were strong men, he understood that, but they were Sand People. None of Tallal's stories had ever mentioned trees.

It looked as if none of the brothers were around. With Addie standing watch over the fire and the camp, they were free to do their work. Raif would be forever grateful to the cragsman for insisting that the camp be raised out of sight of the lake.

"Told 'em, I did," Addie had explained to him last night. "Said if you ever did wake up the last thing you'd want to see is that damned Red Ice. But here there is a natural clearing, says the tall one, pointing at some fool place above the shore. Let's go unnatural, I says back."

Raif smiled at the thought of Addie's conversation with the lamb brothers. Both parties had acted well. The camp was on the far side of one of the western hills bordering the lake. If he wanted to, if either Addie or one of the mules would carry him, he could travel the short distance to the wooded ridge and look down upon the Red Ice.

He never would. Addie, who was wise about many things, had been wisest about this. The ice was slowly melting, and the lamb brothers were out upon it, doing whatever they needed to do to release the souls of their dead. Things were being burned, he knew that much. Even when he had been unconscious he smelled the meaty smoke.

He had lost nine days of his life. The time was gone and he had nothing but the memories of nightmares to show for it. The first time he could recall waking was yesterday morning. He'd heard blue jays calling. Ornery, mad-dog birds, that's what Tern always called. Raif seemed to recall some incident involving Da, some strips of cured elk, and a pair of jays. It was the pleasure of reconstructing the event—Was Da actually curing the meat himself? Had the first bird distracted him while the other sneaked up to the fire rack? And had the fire really been burning? — thjft had finally awakened him. He had mistaken his thoughts for a real world.

Addie and then Tallal had attended him. They treated him with a kind of concerned awe, as if they were equally amazed and worried by his recovery. Raif supposed he might feel the same way himself if he were in their shoes. Addie had fussed himself into a state and then left. The lamb brother had been more composed. And efficient. Washing and doctoring had been done. Tallal's long brown fingers had been careful as they touched Raifs back and the livid purple burn on his chest.

Raif looked at the burn and realized he knew its shape. "The stor-mglass."

Tallal had nodded once, a movement close to a bow. He was wearing his hood and veil so that only his dark eyes with their bluish eye whites showed. "It drew the lightning. This lamb brother believes that when the lightning touched the stormglass it started a stalled heart."

Raif had lain there, remembering tilings he had no desire to remember. Dead fingers clutching a sword. Armor raised into brutal ridges. The inhuman forms of the Endlords. What he could not recall was what had happened after he pulled the sword from the ice.

"You wore the glass against your heart."

Had he? If it was so it was not by design. He'd been hanging on by sheer luck there.

"The glass called us." Tallals expression seemed gentle. "We came."

Raif thought of the dam of mist, of all that lay behind it. "How long?"

Tallal touched each black dot on the bridge of his nose. "The Want is a desert of many mysteries. The lamb brothers know few of them.

The stormglass called as we lay down our mats for Alash, the evening prayer. One of our brothers noted that a sickle moon appeared in the sky at the same moment. That moon stayed with us through the journey, and before it set we found you and the One Who Knows Sheep on the ice."

Addie. The thought of the cragsman coming to find him, having to walk across the landscape of raised and frozen corpses and shattered ice, stirred Raif deeply. He would never know what the cragsman had found, never understand what it cost him to approach the burned and lifeless body that belonged to his friend.

Raif knew he owed Addie Gunn. There didn't seem much chance of paying back a debt like that. You just had to live with it.

He was less sure what he owed to the lamb brothers. They had opened up his shoulder and drawn out the Shatan Maer's claw. It had been the elder brother, not Tallal, who had done the work. Raif was glad he had been asleep. Addie had told him that he had lain on his stomach for three days while the strange and unstable remains of shad-owflesh were placed on the oozing wound. Shadow drew shadow. The Unmade had been frozen in the lake too. Their flesh corrupted quickly as it thawed, smoking to nothing like a pure form of fuel. Addie said the brothers had farmed a single corpse for the poultice, moderating its temperature by exposing the carcass to sunlight or covering it with lake ice and skins. New strips were cut and laid every hour. The cragsman had been eager to tell more, but Raif did not want to hear it. At some point in the story the leeches had started to look good.

"Popped out like a piece of gristle," Addie had said, unable to resist revealing the final detail "Little black thing, it was. Shiny as a dead fly."

Raif had told Addie to go. He could only take knowledge like that in small doses. And he had not liked word farmed.

Easing himself further back against the rock, Raif braced the weight of his upper body with his right arm. He knew better than to use his left. It was still weak and spasms passed along at unexpected moments, making it impossible to use with any confidence. Tallal said it would heal, given time.

A cool breeze channeled up the hillside, stirring the dark sea of trees. A lone heron was heading north, its scrawny yellow feet swaying from side to side as it beat its powerful wings. To the west the clanholds spread out in a series of hills and rolling valleys. Clansmen must have takeiwto the woods, for Raif could see several lines of smoke rising above the canopy. The warmer weather had brought out hunters. Elk would be moving north, like the heron, and moose would be calving. Boars would be out from their dens, snuffling for bulbs in the damp earth beneath the trees. Raif thought perhaps Tallal was right: He would heal. Already he wanted down there. He wanted to be deep in the woods, hunting with a good heavy spear and the Sull bow.

If he had no obligations that was what he would choose to do with his life, he realized, idly scanning the valley for game. If he could not be a clansman he would be a woodsman. Build himself a cabin for the winters, take to the trails in spring and summer, hunt, fish, learn some things about animals and nature. Swim in black-water pools, eat rosehips warmed by the sun and berries frozen by sudden frosts. Hopefully not die from cooking the wrong kind of mushrooms. It would be a life not without struggle and hardship. And it would be a life alone.

Raif thought of Ash then, her silver hair and fine hands and long legs… and he could not imagine her into that life. The dreams had no traction.

None of them did.

Back at the camp, Addie had walked the ewe from the corral and was grooming it with something that looked like a raccoon's ribcage. "Curly-haired," he'd said to Raif this morning. "Solid little milker. Wouldn't have expected it from a fancy." Between the sheep, the trapper's tea, and the lamb brothers' herbs, Addie Gunn was a happy man. Still, his attention wasn't fully on the ewe. Every now and then he'd sneak a look at Raif whilst pretending to pull hairs from his newfangled comb. He was very bad at pretending.

Raif angled his face to get some sun. It felt good. Renewing. He now existed in a world where he had given his word and kept it. Traggis Mole's bidding—half of it—had been done, and Raif now possessed the sword named Loss. It was waiting for him in the tent. He had not laid eyes on it since the day on the ice. According to Addie it would need some work. "Never seen anything like it," was the only comment he had offered on its form. Raif felt a stirring of curiosity about the blade, and wondered if he would ever learn the raven lord s name and history.

He also wondered, but would never ask, whether the lamb brothers had released the man's soul. The raven lord's fate was important to Raif Sevrance. He feared it would become his own. Soon, the Endlords had promised him. The warmth of the sun could not stop the chill from entering the damaged spaces in Raif s heart. They had touched him through the frozen fingers of the raven lord. He'd seen them … and been seen.

They knew him now, knew his name and his purpose.

And where to find him.

Pushing himself up with his fist, Raif muscled himself to standing. He was Watcher of the Dead and he had a sword to grind and sand. And here was Addie coming toward him to help down the slope.

Soon.