A Sword from Red Ice

Using his paddle as a tiller, Waker's rather steered around the rocks with ease. As they rounded the river bend, Effie saw that the gorge wall was lowering and wedges of forest had forced their way to the shore. Undercut cliffs had toppled forward and sheets of sandstone lay half-submerged in the water, bleeding sand the color of rust. Waker was paddling with long, deep strokes and the boat moved quickly around the ledges. Both he and his father appeared to know this stretch of the river well and anticipated problems before they reached them. Just as they were moving out from the shore to avoid some willow-choked shallows something dropped into the river about thirty feet ahead of them. Effie had been minding her paddle strokes, and didn't catch what it was, but she saw the splash. A big crater in the water. Waker turned around and nodded at his father. The Grayman's eyes were bulging with force, but he looked more displeased than afraid. Effie noticed that just before he dug his paddle into the water for his next stroke his right hand slipped away to check on his twin knives.

Once they'd passed the shallows they headed to the nearest landing. As Waker and his father maneuvered the boat parallel to one of the collapsed sandstone ledges, Chedd glanced back at Effie, his eyebrows high. Effie shrugged weakly. It would have been a pretty good time to have her lore.

Waker tied the mooring rope around a fist of rootwood that no longer had a tree attached, and then draped the air bladder over the side of the gunwale to act as a buffer against the rocks.

"You two," he said, looking from Effie to Chedd. "Stay here. Keep your mouths shut and don't try anything." Waker's eyes jiggled like gut fat as he waited for them to nod. Satisfied, he sent a hand signal to his father, plucked his daypack from beneath the bow seat, and alighted onto the ledge.

As Effie braced herself against the roll of the boat she checked upshore. The cliff wall that had been exposed when the ledge collapsed was deeply, damply red. Trees had not yet found their way into its crevices, but ropy vines were creeping down from the woods above. Two ravines split the cliff. The largest was running with meltwater that frothed over big sandstone boulders. The second appeared to be a path leading up. Waker headed toward it, jumping across a break in the ledge along the way. Within seconds he had passed out of sight.

Chedd, Effie and Waker's father sat in the boat and waited. Effie put her booted feet against the back of Chedd's seat to give them a rest from the standing water. Just as Chedd turned around to complain about them, men's voices sounded overhead. Someone shouted, "Weapons on the rock." In the silence that followed, Effie imagined Waker pulling out his twin knives, the frog and the salamander, and placing them carefully on the appointed ledge. Her gaze tracked the the path Waker had taken into the narrow, winding ravine.

Suddenly harsh laugher exploded from a point lower and closer to the shore. Metal was rapped against rock. Something squealed. A command was issued in a low, guttural voice and the sound of footsteps tramping brush and crunching stone soon followed. Behind her, Waker's father drummed his fingers lightly against the flat of his paddle. As the footsteps grew louder and closer, Effie realized that Waker was being marched back down the ravine. Someone was holding a spear or a stick that scraped against the sands stone with every step. What she saw next was hard to fathom. A black-and-pink pig came into view. It was haltered like a horse with a bit between its teeth and someone was leading it on a leash. The pig's eyes were small and mean and its hairy chewed-up ears flopped around the sides of them like blinkers. Snuffing wetly, it snouted through the sedge and berry canes at the bottom of the ravine. The man holding the leash came into view next. He was nearly as ugly as his pig. His nose had been broken so many times it looked as if it had knuckles. Hefty but turning to lard, he was dressed in a stripy red-and-gold cloak and donkey-hair pants that were too tight. His weapon was a two-pronged spear that he held upright like a pitchfork. A slack iron chain, not unlike a hammer chain, connected the spear head to a leather band at his wrist.

Waker followed next, and two other men brought up the rear. Both men were armed with evil-looking four-bladed spears.The smaller man wore a cloak that had been embellished with iridescent disks that flashed like fishskin. Effie could not tell if any of them were clan.

"What 'ave we here, my little piggy?" the man with the broken nose said, spying the boat "Livestock, by the looks of it. Good and healthy."

Waker came forward. He was unrestrained and Effie saw that his knives were riding high in their sheaths. Tar oozed over their hilts. The strangers must have poured it on the blades to disable them. "They're mine, Eggtooth. I've paid the toll on them."