A Sword from Red Ice

Addie Gunn and Raif were dead tired. Both had stayed up late in the night hunting deer and then woke before dawn to try for more. Stillborn on the other hand had fallen asleep at sunset and stayed asleep until breakfast, when the smell of Addie roasting goat's heart had finally roused him. He'd been lively all day, even though he was the one hauling the majority of game. A full-grown doe was balanced, yokelike, across his shoulders. An impromptu sled made from lashed willow poles that held the snagcat pelt, various cuts of snagcat meat and a partially butchered fawn, was being pulled on a leash attached to his waist. Addie carried the butchered goat and its pelt in a game sack slung over his shoulder, and Raif carried a mixed bag of ribs, spines, pelvises and longbones that could be boiled and scraped for meat, marrow and fat. All three of them smelled like blood, but Raif found he did not much dislike it. It reminded him of longhunts with with Da and Drey.

"At least he sent the pretty ones" was all Stillborn said as they approached the eastern ledge.

Two Maimed Men awaiting them on the rimrock were armed with thick spears of blackened and case-hardened iron. One wore an armored cloak; a half-circle of boiled and pleated leather mounted with coin-sized metal rings that had to weigh at least twenty pounds. The other man wore chainmail that had rusted around the armpits and a wool kilt over wool pants. Both men appeared whole, but Raif knew better than to be fooled by that. Everyone in the Rift was missing something, and experience had taught him that imperfections that did not immediately meet the eye were usually the worst kind.

Some instinct, perhaps fear or simple habit, made Raif stretch out a hand to read the air. The headwind was light and from the north. Updrafts rising from the Rift were fitful and without force.

Shucking off the bag of bones and letting it drop onto the green granite of the ledge, he said to Addie and Stillborn." Take the meat. Go on ahead."

The little cragsman shook his head and was about to tell Raif exactly what he thought of that idea when Stillborn also shook his head. A single, curt shake aimed at silencing Addie Gunn.

"Come on," Stillborn said, somehow managing to clap Addie on the shoulder while still balancing the deer. "Lets make sure our Rift Brothers get the meat."

Addie hesitated. He knew how important the meat was, knew also that the Maimed Men needed to see with their own eyes who had brought it. Finally he asked Raif in a whisper, "Will you be all right, lad?"

Raif stared at the man with the armored cloak as he said, "I'll be fine. If you want to do me a favor find me arrows. Two dozen with feather fletchings."

The cragsman nodded. "If you're not back by midnight we'll come looking." Bending at the knee, he picked up Raif's sack. It was still dripping blood.

As Addie and Stillborn walked ahead, Raif let his right hand come to rest on the crossguard of his borrowed sword. It was a small thing, but it drew the attention of Mole's men away from Addie and Stillborn and to himself.

"You're coming with us to see the chief," said the man wearing the armored cloak. Now that he spoke, Raif saw he was missing front teeth. When Raif failed to move, he thrust out his spear. "Get walking."

He thought they would lead him down to Traggis Mole's cave but they led him up to the high cliffs instead. Ancient crumbling steps cut deep into the rock wound up through the city and out onto the head-cliffs where the Maimed Men maintained their watch. The cliffs bulged above the city like wasps' nests, round-walled and tapering, connected to each other by a series of gangplanks known as the Cloud Walk. Raif had not been up here before and he saw that the rock was older and softer than the ledgerock below. Birds had made and abandoned nests in the potholes, and dwarfed pines had grown and died, leaving skeletons that rattled in the wind.

Both men were well-accustomed to the Cloud Walk and navigated the wood-and-rope walkways with ease. Raif tried not to look down, did look down and began to sway.

"We got a spinner," commented the armored cloak man without rancor. Neither he nor the chainmail man raised a hand to help.

Raif closed his fist around the guiderope. Two ropes suspended at waist height and a foot-wide plank of wood were all that was preventing him from crashing to the rimrock ninety feet below. Wind set the ropes swaying, and the weight of three men on the plank made the wood creak and bow. It would be easy to kill him. A near forceless movement of the hand would be all it would take. Raif tried to calm himself, but the world was tipping, and he was unsure what to do with his body to counter it.

"Walk."