A Sword from Red Ice

The cragsman guided Raif to one of the tents vertical support poles. "Set here," he said, handing him off to the unstripped birch log. "I'll fetch Flawless."

Raif held on to the pole as he watched the little fair-haired cragsman slip between the tent flaps. He didn't think he had ever met a better man.

The mule wandered over to inspect the blankets Raif had been lying on. A piece of onion was stuck against its nose. The Sull horse moved forward a few steps and then stopped. Raif wondered if she had watched him while he slept.

"Sick man go back to bed," came a voice from the far side of the tent wall. A moment later two small brown hands parted the canvas and the man named Flawless stepped through.

It looked as if he had been hammered from bronze. He was tiny and his skin was darkly burnished. His cheekbones were high and angular and the rest of his face seemed to hang from them, His eyes were star-Singly blue. "Bed now." he said jabbing his finger accusingly at Raif. "A pox upon the heart."

Shaking his head, Raif hung on grimly to the pole, "How long will it work for, the poultice?"

The little man put his hands on his hips. He was dressed in hunter's greens with mam bells and pouches strapped and slung around his waist and chest A silver bar as thick as a child's finger pierced the car-tilage of his right upper ear. "No leeches. Nowork. Bed."

Raif realized he didn't even know what time of day it was. The light seeping in through the canvas had been diffused by thick cloud. Stubbornly he said, "I'm leaving today. So do whatever youneed to" — he jerked his head backward—"with that to keep me going awhile."

Flawless hissed a few soft words in Sull. It sounded like he was curs-ing. Pulling a glass jar from the large rawhide pouch at his waist, he said, "Need another leech. Need at least twelve a day." As he unwrapped the twine holding the cloth lid in place, Raif saw the jaw was full of black squirming worms. Leeches. "Have thirty left."

Raif made the calculation.

"Turn," Flawless commanded, plucking a long wet leech from the jar. The creature's three-lobcd mouth was open and it wriggled in the old man's grip, trying to attach itself to his thumb.

Raif turned. Forehead pressing against the tent canvas he waited. Flawless started whistling. Raif felt a light touch close to the center of his back, and then the suckers bit into his skin.

"Bad back there," the Trenchlander said. "Keep clean."

Raif unclenched his jaw. Deciding it was time he got dressed, he released his grip on the pole. His legs felt like wet sticks, and he willed his knees to firmness as he stepped toward the blankets.

Flawless folded his arms and watched him. He was still holding the open jar in his fist.

"Need go Hell's Town," he said in his sharp, biting voice. "See healers in Maggot Quarter. Cut it out."

Raif nodded. He could not see his clothes, and remembered that Addie had said his tunic was cut into strips. The stormglass.

"Friend has belongings," the Trenchlander said, batting the mule away as it came to investigate the jar. "You know where you go?"

"Maggot Quarter."

"No. Red Ice. Friend tell you where?"

Raif kept his face calm. He did not blink. "You tell me."

"Red Ice not far north. Many bears. Maygi hide it. Do not know where going won't find it. Bluddsmen ride past, never see. On border. Half Sull. Half Bludd. North.

The man's ice blue eyes burned intensely as he spoke and Raif real-ized there were things here he did not fully understand. Histories and betrayals, hurts and resentments. Trenchlander versus Sull; and all that went along with being second best. Raif thought about Yiselle No Knife and the Spinebreaker and before them Ark Veinsplitter and Mal Naysayer: Prideful people not easy to like.

Something cold in Raif thought, My gain. And he switched his thoughts elsewhere. "What is the Sull word for cloud?"

The little man did not appear surprised by the question. "Mish."

Raif had thought it was. The two stood facing each other as the leeches tried to squirm their way out of the jar, wriggling on top of each other and arching their bellies into hoops.

"Take," Flawless said eventually, holding the jar out to Raif. "Friend knows what to do."

Raif did not thank him. They were beyond such things now. A jar of leeches. A betrayal of one's people. A pox upon the heart.

The little man left, the skin on the back of his neck flashing like sheet metal as he ducked between the tent flaps. Flawless the Bear Trapper was nearly pure Sull. And he had spilled Sull secrets to a man who could destroy his people.

Raif set down the jar of leeches, dragged a blanket from the tent floor, and covered his bare chest. The woolen fabric dragged against the thing on his back and he realized he would have to be careful with clothing from now on. Holes would need to be cut. That made him smile. Grimly.