A Sword from Red Ice

Should he have looked further after Dagro's death? One event, two differing stories: had he dismissed Raif Sevrance's account too soon? The boy had called Mace a liar, said that Dagro had fallen by the rendering pit, not by the tent poles as Mace insisted. Even Raifs brother Drey, who was a staunch supporter of Mace, had agreed with his younger brother's version of events. Yet Raif Sevrance was just a boy, barely seventeen and without an oath. His father had been slain at the same time as Dagro, and he was simmering with rage and grief. The murderers had escaped, unchallenged and unpursued, and Inigar knew what kind of feelings that stirred in a man. Someone had to be made to suffer. Inigar had assumed that Raifs anger toward Mace was simple misdirection. A raw boy looking for someone to blame. Had he been wrong? Ahoooooooooo.

The wolf. So close now the horses would be stirring in the stalls and the chickens pecking at the wire in the coop. Inigar knew how they felt: uneasy, restive, trapped.

Sucking in icy air, he listened for a response. Every summer since the Hundred Year Cull, bands of Bailsmen rode out along the far borders to hunt pack wolves that ranged too close to the hold. The slain animals were skinned, not butchered. For while no Hailsman ate wolftneat, many enjoyed the pleasure of walking on wolf-pelt rugs. In recent times the cull had grown sparse as packs moved north and west, out of range of Hailish steel. Pack wolves were cautious. They had pups and yearlings to protect, and their collective wisdom gave them an advantage over solitary beasts.

to The animal that howled this night was not part of such a pack though, for nothing but deathly silence returned its call. A lone wolf.

Fear and understanding slowly began to coalesce in Inigar's thoughts. Something terrible was about to happen. Here, in the exact and sacred center of clan. The Hail Wolf had returned home.

Inigar stood perfectly straight and still and decided what he would do. Mist from the guidestone glided across his face yet he did not shrink back or blink. Quite suddenly his greatest mistake was clear to him. It had not been misjudging Mace Blackhail or taking an oath from Raif Sevrance that he knew from the very beginning the boy was doomed to break. No. Grave though those errors were they did not match his failure to train an apprentice guide.

He had wanted Effie Sevrance so badly he'd refused to consider anyone else. She was so powerful, that was the thing, the augers that preceded her birth so potent. And she had been born to the stone. No one in any clan at any time Inigar could remember had been born to the guidestone. Yet that was the girl s lore, and he had coveted its power for his office and himself. Possessiveness had made him blind. Utner candidates had been worthy-Jebb Onnacre, Nitty Hart, Will Sperling-yet he had rejected them out of hand. Now who would guide Blackhail when he was gone? A sound, pitched so low it was almost beyond hearing, pulsed through the guidestone like an eartth tremor. This time Inigar heard it clearly, instantly recognizing the source. The Hailstone. The vast chunk of black granite and blackened silver that had been cut from the great stone fields of Trance Vor seven centuries earlier and floated a thousand miles upstream along the Flow was returning the call of the Hail Wolf.

Ice mist switched violently, sending waves rippling out from the stone. Inigar could smell it now: cold and vast, like the sky on a clear winter night. It was the smell of gods. A part of his brain, made just for this moment, came to life solely to recognize the scent. Tears sprang to his eyes. Here was everything he had ever wanted: to exist in the presence of gods. To regard them and be regarded. To know and to be known.

mnioooooooooooooo…

At his last moment what should a man do? Inigar thought of all he had been and all he had hoped to be … but he would not dwell on his failings. The time for that was done. He thought of clan; of the Shanks and Sevrances, the Blackhails, Murdocks, Ganlows and Lyes. Imperfect men and women, but the sum of the whole was good. He thought of Embeth Hare, the girl who would have wed him if he'd asked. "Inny," she had said to him on that perfect summer day as they lay out on the hay piles, soaking in the sun. "If you decide to become Beardy's apprentice you must never forget two things. It's not enough that we fear the gods. We must love them also." When he had asked her what the second thing was, she had pulled up her skirt and made love to him. His first and only time.

Embeth had always been smarter than him. Wind whipped against his face as ice mist started to rotate around the guidestone. Faster and faster it moved, round and round, blasting tools and smoking embers from its path. The gods were leaving Blackhail. And what sort of gods would it make them if they left quietly without a sound?