A Sword from Red Ice

But Addie Gunn wasn't looking ahead. He was looking at a shrubby dried-up plant by his feet. "Trapper's tea, I swear it." His voice was filled with quiet awe. He plucked off a leaf, chewed on it, and then nodded with satisfaction. Squatting he pinched the stem of the plant close to the base and plucked the entire thing, roots and all, from the snow. "I'm a happy man" he said as if he meant it.

Raif murmured something. As Addie was chewing he had been looking east. Far in the east a break in the stormheads allowed sunlight to pour down onto a circle of heavily wooded hills.

Mish'al Nij.

A place of no cloud.

It had been a mistake to imagine the border between Bludd and Sull would run straight south to west.

Addie tucked the shrub inside his game pouch, and applied the last of the moving leeches to Raif s back. As he led the way due east, the first bolt of lightning split the air.

FORTY-FOUR Chosen by the Stone Gods

It was a Bludd sunset, firing the entire breadth of the sky from north to south, the cloud banks glowing like rubies, the sun shimmering like a bronze disk. Vaylo wasn't given much to fancy, but he was sure he could feel the sun's brilliance on his face. You couldn't call it warmth, as it was cold enough to freeze the spit on your teeth if you smiled, yet he had the sensation that he could feel individual waves of light bouncing off his skin.

Vaylo frowned at Hammie across the ramparts of the hillfort, suspicious that this bout of poetieism might be his fault. The Faa man had just said the sunset reminded him of Burning River.

That legend was sacred to Bludd; it struck something close to its heart. Touched fear and pride, gave children images to bring to their nightmares, and grown clansmen a sense of what it meant to belong to Bludd. Ockish Bull had been the one who first told him the tale in full. Vaylo must have been about nine; Ockish about twenty-one. Ockish had led a two-day hunt into the Bluddwilds north of the roundhouse and they'd bivouacked in a chest-high snowdrift. Ockish was the eldest so he had them doing all the grunt work. Vaylo remembered one of his half-brothers had come along. Arno. It had been a good two days. There'd been the wonder of digging a shelter from the snow, followed by the second wonder of it not melting when they lit a fire. Deer had been caught, gods bless their overstruck, overkilled souls—no one except Ockish had exercised any restraint. Even Arno hadn't been too bad, and there'd been a point when they'd mounted a water-bladder fight when he and Arno had been working together as a team, laughing, soaking and perfectly synchronizing the filling and the throwing of the missiles. For that one fine hour it had been «us» against "them."

Both of his half-brothers were easier to get along with when they weren't together, Vaylo had realized later.

That second night Ockish had ordered the construction of a parley fire. No one but him knew what this was meant, yet seven boys all under the age of fifteen had moved sharp to his orders, building a six-feet-wide hollow sphere of logs. "Its for light, not warmth," he had told them once it was done. 'That way we'll be sure to see each other's faces when we talk."

Vaylo and Arno had agreed that it was a fine thing. Ockish had lit the primed sphere with ceremonial flourish, and then handed Vaylo a flask to pass around the circle. "One swig per man." Whatever it was it had tasted like wood varnish and made everything Vaylo looked at that night seem sharp in the middle and blurred around the edges.

In his own good time, Ockish Bull had then told them about the legend of Burning River. "It was the time of the great Vor lord, Wardwir Crane, a thousand years deep in the past. Wardwir was a fearsome general and rode to battle wearing the black and winged cranehelm and wielding the sword named Beheader. His enemies shivered to see it. He wanted land and fancied HalfBludd and he took it on the Night of Wralls. It is told that Wardwir beheaded one hundred and thirty-one Halfmen in battle before he ordered his war scribes to cease the count. Wardwir judged that if a higher number was recorded his enemies might disbelieve the tale. And cease to fear him." A pause had followed where Ockish Bull's gaze had traveled around the parley fire, waiting for everyone present to register their agreement. Vaylo had nodded vigorously. A hundred and thirty-one was a good number.