A Sword from Red Ice

Throwing a hand out, the cragsman rose to standing. "A man can hardly go apologizing for dropping clean dead. And even if he did it'd take a hard sort of nutgall to accept it." Again, the eyes were bright.

From the back of the tent, the Sull horse made a wicking noise and threw back its beautiful elongated head.

"Easy, lady," Addie said, using his sheep voice. He walked over and gently knuckled her nose. The animal pushed against him, calmed. "What happened?" Raif asked.

Addie sighed. "You fell. Just crumpled clean at the knees right by the drying rack. Me and Gordo upped and ran straight for you.

Neither of us knew what the hell to do. I set my ear to your chest—you were gone. Clean gone. That's when old Flawless gets there. Didn't run—he's not the sort—but he gets to it soon enough, starts pumping your ribs like they were bellows. All the while he's speaking in Sull, ordering Gordo to fetch this and that, telling me in Common to stop casting my shadow in his way. Sit, he tells me. I see to the boy. Next thing I know your legs start jerking, a noise comes from your throat like you're being strangled. Gordo's bringing all kind of medicines— leaves and tiny bottles and potions. Flawless pulls out his hunting knife, slices off your tunic as if it's a deerhide he fancies mounting for a trophy, and tells me to boil some water for the herbs. It all happened so fast I could barely track it. A minute later you're half naked on a horseblanket, being rolled onto your stomach so Flawless can have a look at the puncture wound."

Addie patted the horse's head. Noticing her nose band had ridden up, he automatically pulled it back in place. "Flawless asked what was up with you and I couldn't see a way around it so I told him everything: the piece of shadow that was lodged in your shoulder, the thing Yiselle No Knife said about it stopping your heart. Too damned shaken to lie. Too afraid that if I didn't speak the truth you just might die there in front of that bloody skinned bear."

Recalling the hollowed out eyes of the bear skull, Raif shivered. He could feel the leeches sucking on his back, feel hundreds of tiny teeth clamped to his flesh. "Who is this Flawless?"

"Some old trapper coot. Been around awhile, knows some stuff. Flawless isn't his real name, but it's as close as these old gums can get to it. He doesna seem to mind—specially after I explained to him what it meant. That will be my new name, he says. He's quite a one. He'll be in soon to check on your, you know … back."

Raif tried to control his revulsion. They were moving, that was the thing, their slimy bellies contracting as they pumped in blood. Motioning to the Sull horse, he asked, "Is that his?"

Addie understood this question. "Aye. Flawless has some Sull in him, more than Gordo that's for sure. Don't think he has much love for them though. I get the feeling the Sull aren't too happy about him trapping bears." Lowering his voice, the cragsman returned to Raif's side. "Know that trap I sprung the other day by the fallen cedar?" Raif nodded. "Gordo finds it yesterday, tells Flawless, who's convinced it was the Sull that did it."

Raif thought about this. "We're in Sull territory?"

"Just about. Apparently the borders are a little hazy around the top of Bludd."

"Help me up," Raif said, planting his palms on the tent floor.

"You can't get up," Addie protested, stepping back. "You need to lie there and rest."

"I need," Raif said, gritting his teeth as he leveraged his weight forward, "to find the Red Ice."

"Traggis Mole is dead. What does it matter when you find the damn sword?"

Pain shot along Raif s left arm as he pushed himself to standing. The tent spun and he stumbled as he tried to orientate himself. Light floated sideways and blurred. Addie's hand clamped on to his right arm. "Steady now."

Braced against Addie's weight, Raif waited for the tent to stop spinning. He felt a small loosening on his back. Something moved. A leech dropped to the floor. Addie kicked it away with the side of his boot, but not before Raif had seen something brown and bloody, like a piece of liver.

"Addie, I have to go. I need to find the sword." Swear to me you will fetch the sword that can stop them. Swear it. "I spoke an oath. I intend to keep it."

He had meant to say more, to tell Addie that he had broken his word so many times that there was now nothing solid beneath anything he said, that his fate was to wield the sword named Loss and slay the creatures that could be destroyed only with such a blade, and that every day he spent in territory claimed by the Sull he risked both his own life and Addie's. Yet he stopped himself. At the end of everything it was the oath to Traggis Mole that counted.

Addie had trained to be a Wellhouse warrior and then deserted his clan in favor of a life herding sheep. When Raif had asked him about it all those months ago in the Rift, the cragsman had said only one thing in his defense. I never took the oath. Those words defined Addie Gunn's life.