A Sword from Red Ice

On the third day the land began to change. The slopes south of the Rift grew greener as the grasses and heathers were replaced with stone pines, blue cedar and hemlock. The hills themselves shifted into rolling valleys, forested hummocks and ridges and rocky bluffs. On the north side of the Rift the Craglands had begun, and spear-shaped hunks of rock towered over dwarfed pines and bushy black spruce. The Rift was perhaps fifty feet across now, and if they had wanted to they could have climbed into it and made the crossing to the clanholds. Boulders as big as barns, and entire dead trees, complete with boughs and root balls, choked the crack. Colonies of ptarmigan nested amid the rocks, and saxifrage and lousewort grew in mats from the Rift's buckled walls. Raif wondered what existed beneath the debris and boulders. Did the Rift still lead to the abyss?

"That's Bludd territory over there," Addie said, wagging his chin south. "See that stand of big red pines on the ridge, that's their marker. Anything east and south from now on is theirs."

Raif had wondered about those trees. In a sea of black, green and blue their rust-colored trunks stood out like a warning. A pair of eagles had made their nest at the top of the tallest pine, building a black ring around the point.

"How far to the Racklands?" Raif asked, working out a sudden twinge of pain in his left shoulder.

The little fair-haired cragsman shrugged. "Depends upon the path."

It was an uncharacteristically vague answer for Addie Gunn, and Raif wondered if they had reached the edge of his knowledge. The cragsman hailed from a Dhoone-sworn elan, and perhaps he had avoided grazing his sheep in territory claimed by Bludd. Raif glanced over at Addie. The cragsman had tied a band of rabbit fur around his ears; it looked as if he was wearing a bandage. Goat grease on his nose and lips made them shine. "Best keep moving," he said. "It's too cold to stop."

Raif followed him along the deer path that wound between the rocks and shrunken pines. The snow underfoot wasn't deep, but it was all ice and it did not yield to the foot. The temperature had been dropping for the past two days—ever since the new snow—and even though it was midday the air was still several degrees below freezing. The Ice Trapper sealskins helped keep Raif warm. Earlier he'd slathered his ears, nose, and lips with bow wax, and imagined it made for an unlovely sight. Bow wax turned opaque when it cooled.

Overhead the sky was a deep sapphire blue. Lines of high serrated clouds moved from the north. Ice sparkled at groundlevel, coating pine cones and sedge leaves, and the bases of the limestone crags. They had been on the path at dawn and had not stopped except to swig from their water bladders and pee. This was the fourth day of traveling and Raif found he enjoyed the simple hardness of camp life. It was good to go to bed each night bone tired and aching, and satisfying to hike onto a high ledge and see how far you'd come in a day. The cold did not bother him much. Both he and Addie were from northern clans; they were used to the shock of spring frosts.

Addie was a fine traveling companion, able to build fires, skin hares, find running water, sniff out eggs, follow game tracks and cook. He had an eye for the simplest route. Natural stairs leading up cliff faces, dry creekbeds, fallen logs spanning gorges: the cragsman spied things that Raif would have missed. Every evening since they had left the city, Addie had located a sheltered place to camp, and every day he had found something worth bagging for the pot. Last night he had brought down a fat brown rabbit and today there had been more eggs. Raif was grateful for his presence. There wasn't much talking between them, but silence was different—better—when it was shared.

They had decided to continue east for another day and then gradually move north from the Rift. Addie said the Craglands appeared to ease to the north and they would need to do less climbing. He did not question Raif's destination, and that seemed no small blessing. In his former life Addie Gunn had kept a herd of sheep on the move in the highlands only staying in one place during spring lambing. He was a man who didn't need to know where he was going to spend the next night.

Raif did not give much though to the Red Ice. East, Thomas Argola had said. That was all, but it was also enough. It made things simple. They would head more or less east, switching directions as the land dictated, and see what they could find. If Tallal of the lamb brothers was right and a great battle had taken place in the Valley of Cold Mists then some evidence somewhere must exist.

Glancing north, Raif wondered where the lamb brothers were this day. Were they in the Want drifting east?

"Some smoke ahead." Addie's voice seemed to come from a great distance. A pause followed while the cragsman figured the ways. "We could turn north now. Rock's looking a mite splintery but if we we keep our feet lively we'll manage."