A Sword from Red Ice

And then there was Drey. There was always Drey. An image of his older brother came to Raif immediately, the one that never went away, the one of Drey on the greatcourt that winter morning, stepping forward when no one else would. I will stand second to his oath. The words burned Raif even now. He had broken that oath and shamed his clan. Yet the worst was that he'd let down Drey. Drey…

Raifs thoughts drifted into a dark place. Falling, he thought of the men he had killed: some named and many nameless. Bluddsmen, city men, the lone Forsworn knight in a redoubt filled with death. Thirst followed him down, gnawing, gnawing, like a rat at the back of his throat. His lips had shriveled to husks and when he smiled at something playing in the darkness they cracked and bled. Pain brought him back. Blinking like a man shaken suddenly awake, Raif looked around. The Want had shifted. Something subtle had changed, a rotation of perspective or a shortening of distance: he could not decide which. The mountain ridge that they'd been heading toward all day was now upon them, looming dark and rugged and barren. Part of Raif had been hoping to find glaciers in the high valleys but from here he could tell that he'd badly misjudged the ridge's ele-vation. What he'd imagined were mountains were little more than spine-backed hills.

Without warning the wound in his right shoulder sent out a bolt of white-hot pain. Knee joints turning to jelly, he instantly dropped to the ground. The headland's limestone had given way to softer chalkstone and Raif fell into a bed of pulverized chalk. Massaging his shoulder' he hacked up freezing dust.

Bear came over, anxiously prodding him with her head. The little hill pony had a frothy scum around her lips, and her tongue was now too big for her mouth. It lolled to the side, black and bloated. Raif thought about his sword.

If not now. Soon.

Flinging his left arm around her neck, he allowed her to pull him to his feet. A queer tingle of pain shot along his shoulder as he dusted chalk from his cloak. It was losing its capacity to worry him. He needed water. Bear needed water and shelter—her exposed tongue would be frozen meat within an hour. Worry about anything other than those two things was becoming beyond him. Ignoring the pain, he moved forward.

The point where the headland joined with the ridge was a quicksand of chalk and gravel. Walking on the chalk was similar to walking on dry, powdery snow. With every step Bear sank up to her hocks, sometimes further. Initially the heavier gravel was suspended across the chalk like lily pads over water, and both Raif and Bear learned caution. The gravel might hold, suspended beneath the surface by more gravel, or it could sink so fast it created suction. Every step was an ordeal. Every couple of steps one of them had to halt to pull out sunken feet or hooves.

When his right eyeball started to sting, Raif realized he was beginning to sweat. Baked dry by the sun and stiffened by the frost, his cornea seized up the moment salty fluid from his temple slid into his eye socket. His hands and face were now numb, so when he ran a fist across his forehead and his glove came back wet it was a shock.

He was losing too much water. Swallowing hard, he forced himself to stop and think. Ahead, the gravel bank darkened as the charcoal granite of the spineback hills began to peek through. Farther along an entire ridge emerged, rising from the sea of stones and broadening into a rock mass that fused with the first hill, There, Raif decided We'll go as far as the junction. The high vantage point would enable them to see what lay ahead.

If there's no water we're damned.

It was the fast clear thought he had until nightfall Bear began wheezing during the climb across the gravel banks, a sharp little piping noise that sounded as if it were coming from a broken flute And she shied for the first time. When they reached a deep chute filled with younger, sharper scree she refused to cross it, digging in her back hooves and weakly tossing her head. Raif went on ahead awhile, but she wouldn't follow, even when he called her, and he was forced to go back. Light was beginning to fail, and more than anything else he did not want to lose sight of her. He feared the landscape might shift while he wasn't looking and the Want would cancel her out.

It was becoming hard to think. There should have been a way around the chute—he even saw it once, laid out like a treasure map before him—but he couldn't keep the facts in his head. Bear didn't want to walk through the jagged scree. The chute was narrow. Maybe they could double back …