A Sword from Red Ice

They let her paddle now, and she was surprised by how hard it was and how much she needed to rest after even the briefest series of strokes. The pain in the back of her shoulders and forearms would strike quickly and once it was there it nagged continually. Waker told her she would grow into it as long as she paddled every day. Effie had taken him at his word, and had fallen into the rhythm of brief paddles followed by long rests. Three days now and the pain just got worse.

At least she didn't fake-paddle like Chedd, who could be seen even now rotating his paddle as it entered the water so that it sliced more than it pushed. Waker's father must have known what Chedd was up to. Manning the back of the boat he could keep an eye on all three of them—Waker, Chedd and herself—yet he never did anything to correct Chedd's idle ways, and Chedd had the good sense never to look around and catch his eye. Effie decided she must have less good sense, for sometimes she couldn't seem to stop herself and spun around in her seat to look at the tiny old man. Every time without fail he was ready for her, triumphantly, malignly, staring back.

The night she had been saved from drowning by Waker, the old man had told her his name. Or at least she dreamt he had. The name was hiding in her memory like a flea in a crease, and she told herself that if she just waited long enough it would spring right out. Darrow didn't ring any bells, she knew that much. Chedd had come up with that one, and now she came to think on it he might simply have overhead Waker telling his father, "Da, row."

"Naked," Chedd said for no good reason. "As a bear."

Effie watched his shoulders chuffing up and down with delight. It was enough to put you off boys for life.

More paddling was called for, and she took the wooden paddle from her lap and plunged it deep into the brown waist, She might have splashed Chedd on the first stroke, but not on the ones following. Paddling was too serious a business.

It was a calm but cold day and the sky was uniformly white. The Mouseweed was passing through a series of gorges and high-cut banks, and thin, silvery talk emptied into the river at every bend. The cliffs were red sandstone, mined with hollows and crevices, and grown over with chokeberries, black birch and vine. They had left the main artery of the Wolf three days back, following a long camp whilst Effie recu-perated from the near drowning, and without a doubt they'd passed beyond the Dhoonelands and into territory protected by Bludd.

As far as Effie could tell they were heading southeast. The Bitter Hills were a slowly lowering barrier to the south. Stony and jagged, their chutes pocked with new snow and their stiffs dark with hem-locks, they cast long shadows on the river as they dumped sowmelt into its depths. The most easterly section of Bitter Hills was called the Stone Hills by city men, and Effie had to admit it was a pretty decent name. When she was resting between paddles the imagined the city on the far side, Morning Star. Having no experience of citiai whatsoever, she fancied it as a grand collection of roundhouses wtth many outbuildings and several towers. The people would wear liners and silk, not wool and skins, and their voices would be high and fluting.

Ahead and to the north lay the Bluddsworn clans: HalfBludd, Haddo, Frees, Otler and Gray. Chedd said the only roundhouse they'd be likely to spot was Otler's and that was days east of here, but Effie thought he might be wrong. HalfBludd shared borders with Morning Star; depending upon what river branch they were on they might see it once the hills shrank away.

The Mouseweed felt different to Effie than the Wolf, older and more secretive. Last night she had seen a lynx withdrawing through the trees behind the camp. The wild and beautiful cat with its pointed ear tufts and blue-gray pelt did not seem to belong to the world of clan. She had tried explaining this to Chedd-who had rnatter-of-factly informed her the lynx was female-and Chedd had surprised her by agreeing. "Its the Sull who wear their pelts," he said. Sometimes he could say things that were exactly right. Clan did not wear lynx because they did not know how to trap or hunt them. Those skills belonged solely to the Sull.

Deciding she'd had enough of paddling, Effie shook the waer from her oar and rested it against the gunwales. Hands free, she reached for her lore.

It was someething she always did that absentminded checking, that quick motion upward to see how things stood in her world. Stupid Stupid. You'd think by now she'd have gotten used to the fact that her lore was gone, gobbled up by the pike that was more than a pike, lost for ever and eternity in the Wolf.

She had tried to make them go after it—spread nets, dive into the river, build dams—and in fairness to Waker Stone he had not dismissed her pleas out of hand. "Its gone," he had told her firmly. "Even if I dived for it how would I know the difference between that a thousand other stones?"