A Sword from Red Ice

"Come on, lad," Addie said hurriedly. Raif stood. The gyrfalcon made a queer chuffing sound.

Yiselle looked straight at Raif, her gaze piercing the shimmers that rose from the amethyst flames, and mouthed the words Mor Drakka. His Sull name.

"Escort them to the borders of our camp," she told the Spinebreaker. "They will never find Mish'al Nij."

It was a relief to get out of the heat. The icy cold snapped Raif back to life, and he could not recall speaking a word in the tent. Ilya Spinebreaker marched them north, not east, across the ledge, and into the forest of crags and dwarfed spruce. The Sull warrior did not speak. When he reached whatever limit he found satisfactory he stopped walking. In a single breathtaking motion he drew his sword. Six feet of meteor steel sliced ice crystals forming in the air. The sound produced The cragsman's hand hovered above the place where he once kept his portion of powdered guidestone. "Aye. Aye," he said softly. Rousing himself to heartiness, he said, "Well you certainly won't get any help from her ladyship back there. She'd more than likely poke it all the way through."

Raif made himself smile. The tea had gone cold and the metal was now pulling heat from his hands through the gloves. He set it down. "The Sull do not love me. They call me Mor Drakka, Watcher of the Dead. It is told in their histories that one day a man bearing that name will bring about their extinction. They fear that man is me. Before I joined the Maimed Men I traveled the Storm Margin with…a friend. She was injured and two Sull Far Riders stepped in to save her life. They treated her well, helped her, but they could barely tolerate me. We parted from them, and then met up again later in Ice Trapper Territory. Someone drugged me. When I awoke in the morning my friend was gone. The Sull had taken her." I

He let out a long breath. For months he had kept the story of what had happened to Ash to himself and to speak it was a kind of release. Guard yourself, she had warned as the drugs pulled him under. Why had she not said more?

On the opposite side of the fire, Addie Gunn nodded slowly and continuously in understanding. "No love lost between you and the Sull." A pinecone jumped from the fire and the cragsman rolled it back with the toe of his boot. Hot flames ignited it instantly. "But they need you, don't they? What you did with that beast on the ledge, the heart-kill, that's what they would have done. Only you do it different. Better."

A cragsman watches his sheep, Raif realized. No small thing must pass him by. Unsure how to reply, Raif just looked at Addie.

Addie looked back. He was still nodding. "They won't help you find what you're looking for."

"Not willingly. I search for a sword once wielded by their kings," This made Addie stop nodding. "Gods, lad. You're walking a tricky path."

"You walk it with me."

The cragsman snorted. Air left his nostrils, froze, and then sizzled into mist when it hit the flames. "Where is this place we're heading."

We, Raif was glad in his heart to hear it. "It's named the Lake of Red Ice and I do not know where if is save that it lies somewhere to the east."

"That would explain why we were duck-marched north."

"Yes it would"

Both men grinned.

"She knew you by your name?" Addie asked, a question beneath the question.

"I made the mistake of telling the Far Riders my name. They also learned I was a clansman, from Blackhail." Raif tried not to think of the look in Yiselle No Knife's eyes as she had named him Mor Drakka. "Word must have spread." Reading the worry on the cragsman's face, he added, "She was close to guessing, Addie. She knew my name wasn't Deerhunter, knew I was clan and heading east."

Addie frowned. "Deerhunter. That was one god-awful name."

Raif laughed and after a moment Addie joined in, and they laughed so hard their bellies ached, rocking back and forth by the fire.

Soon after, huddled in blankets, greased rags over their faces, they slept. Raif roused himself once in the night to feed the fire. The sky was ablaze with stars. When he next awoke they were gone, and gray clouds were heading out from the north. It was past dawn. A lone raven was kawing at the top of the ridge.

Addie prepared a breakfast of cold meat and boiled water. "Where to?" he asked as they ate.

Raif looked at the clouds. Without meaning to, Yiselle No Knife had given him information. "Find us a path east," Raif said, standing, "any further north and we could lapse into the Want."

Beating ice and pine needles from their gear, they prepared to break camp and head into land ruled by the Sull.

THIRTY-FIVE Mistakes

"Has the bruise gone?" Raina Blackhail asked Anwyn Bird, angling her face toward the light.

The clan matron folded her arms over the chest and looked critically at all of Raina, not just the bruised section of skin on her cheek. "It's yellow."

Raina put out a hand toward her. "Do not say it, Anny. Who could I go running to?"

"Plenty. You could have started with Orwin Shank."