A Sword from Red Ice

The morning wore on. The sun shone with cool brilliance in a blue cloudless sky. After leading them north for an hour or so Addie turned east and they were now descending into a trough-shaped valley carved by some long-retreated glacier. Huge erratic boulders and heaps of gravel peeked out through the thick ground cover of willow, fireweed and black sedge. A series of small green ponds arranged like beads on a thread ran along the center of the valley floor.

"Goats have gone to high ground for the kidding," Addie said, poking bushes with his stick as he searched for prints and scat. "Might see deer if the luck's with us. Elk'll have gone west. Coons and pines: they'll be here, all right. Trick is spotting 'em. Bears, now …" He shook his head. "Better chance of cats."

Raif listened to the cragsman's litany, interested and alert They were at the head of the valley on a steep downslope where he could see for leagues due east The oily smell of sedge filled his nostrils and icy breezes lifted his hair from his scalp. Creatures were alive down there, moving beneath the willow, and he, Raif Sevrance, would hunt them. Life was simple and clear, and once Addie Gunn had finished speaking, Raif braced his bow and set off alone for the valley floor.

Glancing down at the Orrl cloak he saw the glazed leather now reflected the gray-green colors of the sedge. Briefly he wondered if the cloak also masked his man-scent, for he had noticed that as long as he moved quietly he was nearly impossible to detect. His first kill was a three-foot garter snake just emerging from her winter sleep. She was sliding between two ground junipers when he speared her with his new sword. Deciding to leave her whole with the gut intact, he slipped the snake between the waxed folds of his makeshift gamepouch. As he wiped his swordblade clean with a fist of fireweed, he was already scanning his next kill.

A raccoon, her belly swollen with soon-to-be-born kits, had denned in a shallow depression beneath a loose pile of rocks. Raif sent an arrow straight into her heart. It beat and then stopped. The unborn kits continued living for a while and then, one by one, their tiny, perfectly formed hearts ceased pumping. Raif sawed through the arrowshaft, unwilling to pull it and risk the head coming loose. Left inside it would hold the carcass intact After that he decided to form a game pile, and chose an exposed spot on top of one of the boulders. That way if vultures or other opportunists spied the carrion, either Addie or Stillborn could cover it. Might even bag a fat bird for the pot.

Raif pushed off again, searching. It wasn't a good time of day for deer but he had a feeling that the water and the lush growth surrounding it might bring them out, so he made his way deeper into the valley. An hour passed, and then another. The sun moved overhead and flies began buzzing around the gamepouch. When Raif became aware of a large heart close by, watchful and beating with strong, easy strokes, he thought at first it was a brown bear. Then knowledge came to him and he was surprised he could have imagined it was anything other than a cat. Raif moved at the same time the cat did, bringing the bow to vertical as he drew back the string. The cat sprang away, leaping into the deep cover of willows and rocks. It was a full-grown male, heavy as two grown men with a pale silver coat free of markings. Raif loosed his first arrow and watched as it sped wide. He could sense the creature's heart but in the time it took for the arrow to leave the riser and cross the distance between Raif and the cat, the cat was already gone. His second arrow grazed the snagcat's rump. And then, just as Raif brought a third arrow to the plate, something sped past his face. He heard a whoosh followed by a thud of impact and knew instantly that the snag cat had faltered. Keeping his hands firm on bow and bowstring, he aimed the arrow and loosed it.

The big cat stopped. Dead. Raifs heart pounded and a familiar liquid pain rolled across his left shoulder—the first time he'd felt it in days.

"Is he down?" came Stillborn's call. The Maimed Man was standing high above Raif on a bank of stratified rock. Until the moment he had thrown the spear, Raif had been unaware of his presence. Raif was surprised by his own failings. Without Stillborn the cat would have got away. And he should have known Stillborn was there.

Stillborn jumped down onto the valley floor and walked toward the cat. The distance he had thrown the spear was impressive, a length no shorter than two hundred feet. "Saw you fire off a couple of arrows," he said. "Looked like you needed some help."

Raif nodded, attempting to conceal the confusion and irritation he felt.

Stillborn saw it anyway. "Best go look for your arrows, lad."

He did just that, leaving Stillborn to the kill. Two arrows had gone astray, and after searching for a quarter-hour in the brush Raif realized he wasn't going to find them. That had never really been the point.