J. V. Jones - Sword of Shadows 1 - A Cavern of Black Ice

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Book Information:

Genre: Fantasy

Author: J.V. Jones

Title: A Cavern of Black Ice

Series: Sword of Shadows Book 1

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Notes:

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A Cavern of Black Ice

Sword of Shadows Book 1

J.V. Jones

PROLOGUE

A Birth, a Death, and a Binding arissa whispered a hope out loud before looking up at the sky. "Please

make it lighter than before.Please ." As her lips came together she looked up past the wind-twisted pines

and the ridge of frost-riven granite, up toward the position of the sun. Only the sun wasn't there.

Stormheads rolled across the sky, cutting out the sunlight, massing, churning, driven by winds that

snapped and circled like pack wolves around sheep. Tarissa made a small gesture with her hand. The

storm wasn't passing overhead. It had come to the mountain to stay.

Dropping her gaze, she took a steadying breath. She couldn't afford to panic. The city lay a thousand

feet below her, rising from the shadow of the mountain like a second, lesser peak. She could see the ring

towers clearly now, four of them, two built hard against the wall, the tallest piercing the storm with its iron

stake. It was a long way down. Hours of walk, even. And she had to be careful.

Resting her hand on her swollen stomach, she forced herself to smile.Storms ? They were nothing.

She moved quickly. Loose scree, bird skeletons, and snags of wind-blasted wood tripped her feet. It

was hard to walk, even harder to keep her balance on the ever sharpening slope. Steep draws and

creases forced her sideways instead of down. The temperature was falling, and for the first time all day

Tarissa noticed her breath came out white. Her left glove had been gone for days—lost somewhere on

the far side of

the mountain—and she stripped off her right glove, turned it inside out, and pulled it onto her left

hand. The fingers there had started to grow numb.

Dead trees blocked her path. Some of their trunks were so smooth they looked polished. As she

reached out to steady herself against one of the hard black limbs, she felt a sharp pain in her lower

abdomen. Something shifted. Wetness spilled down her thighs. A soft sting sounded in her lower back,

and a wave of sickness washed up her gullet, depositing the taste of sour milk in her mouth. Tarissa

closed her eyes. This time she kept her hopes to herself.

Wet snow began to fall as she pushed herself off from the dead tree. Her glove was sticky with sap,

and bits of pine needles were glued to the fingers. Underfoot the granite ledge was unstable; gravel spilled

from deep gashes, and husks of failed saplings crumbled to nothing the instant they took her weight.

Despite the cold, Tarissa started to sweat. The pain in her back chewed inward, and although she didn't

want to admit it, didn't even want to acknowledge it, her lower abdomen began contracting in rhythmic

waves.

No. No. NO. Her baby wasn't due yet. Two weeks more—ithad to be. She needed to make it to

the city, to find shelter. She'd even held back enough coins for a midwife and a room.

Finding a lead through the rocks, she picked up her pace. A lone raven, its plumage dark and oily as

a scorched liver, watched her in silence from the distorted upper branch of a blackstone pine. Spying it,

Tarissa was conscious of how ridiculous she must look: fat bellied, wild haired, scrambling down a

mountainside in a race against a storm. Grimacing, she looked away from the bird. She didn't like how it

made her feel.

Contractions were coming faster now, and Tarissa found that it helped if she kept on the move.

Stopping made the suffering linger, gave her seconds to count and think.

Mist rose from crevices. Snow flew in Tarissa's face, and the wind lifted the cloak from her back.

Overhead, the clouds mimicked her descent, following her down the mountain as if she were showing

them the way. Tarissa walked with her gloved hand cradling her belly. The fluid between her legs had

dried to a sticky film that sucked her thighs together as she moved. Heat pumped up through the arteries

in her neck, flushing her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.

Faster. She had to move faster.

Spotting a clear run between boulders, Tarissa switched her path farther to her right. Thorns snagged

her skirt, and she yanked on the fabric, losing patience. As she turned back to face the path, the raven

took flight. Its black wings beat against the storm current, snapping and tearing like teeth.

The instant Tarissa stepped forward, gravel and rocks began running beneath her feet. She felt herself

falling, and she flung out her arms to grab at something,anything , to hold her. The mist bid everything at

ground level, and Tarissa's hands found only loose stones and twigs. Pain exploded in her shoulder as she

was thrown against a rock. Pinecones and rocks bounced overhead as she tried desperately to break her

fall. Her bare hand grasped at a tussock of wolfgrass, but her body kept sliding downward and the roots

pulled free in her hand. Her hip bashed against a granite ridge, something sharp shaved skin from the

back of her knee, and when she opened her mouth to scream, snow flew between her lips, freezing the

cry on her tongue.

She came to. There was no pain, just a fog of ragged light lying between her and the outside world.

Above her, as far as her eyes could see, stretched walls of hand-polished limestone, mason cut and

smooth as bone. She'd finally made it to the city with the Iron Spire.

Dimly she was aware of something pushing far below her. Minutes passed before she realized that it

was her body working to expel the child. She swallowed hard. Suddenly she missed all the people she

had run from. Leaving home had been a mistake.

Kaaw!

Tarissa tried to shift her head toward the sound. A hot needle of pain jabbed at the vertebrae in the

base of her neck. She blacked out. When she came to again she saw the raven sitting on a rock before

her. Black-and-gold eyes pinned her with a look that was devoid of pity. Bobbing its head and raising its

scaly yellow claws, it danced a little jig of damnation. When it was done it made a softclucking noise that

sounded just like a mother scolding a child and then flung itself to the mercy of the storm. Cold currents

bore it swiftly away.

Pushing. Her body kept pushing.

Tarissa felt herself drifting… she was so tired… so very, very tired. If only she could find a way

through the fog… if only her eyes could show her more.

As her eyelids closed for the last time and her ribs pressed an unused breath from her lungs, she saw

a pair of booted feet walking toward her. The tar-blackened leather melted snowflakes on contact.

They applied the leeches to him in rings of six. His body was crusted with sweat and rock dust and

dirt, and the first man scraped the skin clean with deer tallow and a cedarwood wedge, while the second

worked in his shadow with metal pincers, a pitchpine bucket, and heavy buckskin gloves.

The man who no longer knew his name strained against his bindings, testing. Thick coils of rope

pressed into his neck, upper arms, wrists, thighs, and ankles. He could shudder and breathe and blink.

Nothing more.

He could barely feel the leeches. One settled in the fold between his inner thigh and groin, and he

tensed for a moment. Pincer took a pinch of white powder from a pouch around his neck and applied it

to the leech. Salt. The leech dropped away. A fresh leech was applied, higher this time so it couldn't

attach itself to skin that wasn't fit.

That done, Pincer stripped off his gloves and spoke a word that sent Accomplice to the far side of

the cell. A moment later Accomplice returned with a tray and a soapstone lamp. A single red flame

burned within the lamp, heating the contents of the crucible above. When he saw the flame, the man with

no name flinched so hard that the rope binding his wrists split his skin. Flames were all he had now.

Memories of flames. He hated the flames and feared them, yet he needed them, too. Familiarity bred

contempt, they said. But the man with no name knew that was only half of it. Familiarity bred

dependence as well.

Thoughts lost in the dance of flames, he didn't see Pincer kneading an oakum wad in his fist. He was

aware only of Accomplice's hands on his jaw, repositioning his head, brushing his hair to one side, and

pushing his skull hard against the bench. The man with no name felt the frayed rope and beeswax wad

thrust into his left ear. Ship's caulking. They were shoring him up like a storm-battered hull. A second

wad was thrust into his right ear, and then Accomplice held the nameless man's jaws wide while Pincer

thrust a third wad into the back of his throat. The desire to vomit was sudden and overpowering, but

Pincer slapped one large hand on the nameless man's chest and another on his belly and pressed hard

against the contracting muscles, forcing them flat. A minute later the urge had passed.

Still Accomplice held on to his jaw. Pincer paid attention to the tray, his hands casting claw shadows

against the cell wall as he worked. Seconds later he turned about. A thread of animal sinew was

stretched between his thumbs. Seeing it, Accomplice shifted his grip, opening the nameless man's jaws

wider, pulling back lip tissue along with bone. The man with no name felt thick fingers in his mouth. He

tasted urine and salt and leech water. His tongue was pressed to the base of his mouth, and then sinew

was woven across his bottom teeth, binding his tongue in place.

Fear came alive in the nameless man's chest. Perhaps flames weren't the only things that could harm

him. "He's done," said Pincer, drawing back.

'What about the wax?" breathed a third voice from the shadows near the door. It was the One Who

Issued Orders. "You are supposed to seal his eyes shut."

'Wax is too hot. It could blind him if we use it now." "Use it."

The flame in the soapstone lamp wavered as Accomplice drew the crucible away. The man with no

name smelled smoke given off from the impurities in the wax. When the burning came it shocked him.

After everything he had been through, all the suffering he had borne, he imagined he had outlived pain. He

was wrong. And as the hours wore on and his bones were broken methodically by Pincer wielding a

goosedown padded mallet, Accomplice following after to ensure the splintered ends were pulled apart,

and his internal organs were manipulated with needles so long and fine that they could puncture specific

chambers in his lungs and heart while leaving the surrounding tissue intact, he began to realize that

pain—and the ability to feel it—was the last sense to go.

When the One Who Issued Orders stepped close and began breathing words of binding older than

the city he currently stood in, the man with no name no longer cared. His mind had returned to the flames.

There, at least, was a pain that he knew.

ONE The Badlands Raif Sevrance set his sights on the target andcalled the ice hare to him. A

moment of disorientation followed, where the world dropped out of focus like a great dark stone sinking

to the bottom of a lake; then, in the shortest space that a moment could be, he perceived the animal's

heart. The light, sounds, and odors of the badlands slid away, leaving nothing but the weight of blood in

the ice hare's chest and the hummingbird flutter of its heart. Slowly, deliberately, Raif angled his bow

away from the target. The arrow cracked the freezing air like a word spoken out loud. As its iron blade

shot past the hare, the creature's head came up and it sprang for cover in a cushion of black sedge.

'Take the shot again," Drey said. "You sent that wide on purpose." Raif lowered his bow and glanced

over at his older brother. Drey's face was partially shaded by his fox hood, but the firm set of his mouth

was clear. Raif paused, considered arguing, then shrugged and reset his footing on the tundra. It never felt

good deceiving Drey.

Fingers smoothing down the backing of his horn-and-sinew bow, Raif looked over the windblown

flats of the badlands. Panes of ice already lay thick over melt ponds. In the flattened colt grass beneath

Raif's feet hoarfrost grew as silently and insidiously as mold on second-day bread. The few trees that

managed to survive in the gravelly flood-plain were wind-crippled blackstone pines and prostrate

hemlock. Directly ahead lay a shallow draw filled with loose rocks and scrubby bushes that looked as

tough and bony as moose antlers. Raif dipped his gaze a fraction lower to the brown lichen mat

surrounding a pile of wet rocks. Even on a morning as cold as this, the lick was still running.

As Raif watched, another ice hare popped up its head. Cheeks puffing, ears trembling, it held its

position, listening for danger. It wanted the salt in the lick. Game animals came from leagues around to

drink at the trickle of salt water that bled across the rocks in the draw. Tem said the lick welled up from

an underground stream.

Raif raised his bow, slid an arrow from the quiver at his waist. In one smooth motion he nocked the

iron arrowhead against the plate and drew the bowstring back to his chest. The hare swiveled its head.

Its dark eyes looked straight at Raif. Too late. Raif already had the creature's heart in his sights. Kissing

the string, Raif let the arrow fly. Fingers of ice mist parted, a faint hiss sounded, and the arrowhead shot

straight into the hare's rib cage. If the creature made a sound, Raif didn't hear it. Carried back by the

force of the blow, it collapsed into the lick.

'That's three to you. None to me." Drey's voice sounded flat, resigned.

Raif pretended to check his bow for hairpin cracks. "Come on. Let's shoot at targets. No more hares

are going to show now you've sent a live one into the lick." Drey reached out and touched Raif's bow.

"You could have used a smaller head on that arrow, you know. You're supposed tokill the hare, not

disembowel it."

Raif looked up. Drey was grinning, just a bit. Relieved, Raif grinned back at him. Drey was two years

older than he, better at everything an older brother should be better at. Up until this winter he had been

better at shooting, too. A lot better.

Abruptly Raif tucked his bow into his belt and ran for the draw. Tem never let them shoot anything

purely for sport, and the hares had to be taken back to camp, skinned, and roasted. The pelts were

Raif's. Another couple more and he'd have enough for a winter coat for Effie. Not that Effie had much

use for a coat. She was the only eight-year-old in Clan Blackhail who didn't enjoy running around in the

snow. Frowning, Raif twisted the arrows free from the twig-thin bones of the hare's rib cage, careful not

to break the shafts. Timber straight enough for arrows was rare in the badlands.

As he sealed the carcass in his game pouch, Raif checked the position of the sun. Nearly noon now.

A storm heading elsewhere blew eastward in the far north. Dark gray clouds rolled across the horizon

like smoke from a distant fire. Raif shivered. The Great Want lay to the north. Tem said that if a storm

didn't begin in the Want, then it sure as stone would end there.

'Hey! Rough Jaw! Get your bow over here and let's shred some wood." Drey sent an expertly

pitched stone skittering off rocks and hummocks, to land with a devilish skip precisely at Raif's feet. "Or

are you scared your lucky streak just ended?"

Almost against his will, Raif's hand rose to his chin. His skin felt as bristly as a frozen pinecone. He

was Rough Jaw all right. No argument there. "Paint the target, Sevrance Cur. Then I'll let you take a

hand's worth of practice shots while I restring my bow for wood."

Even a hundred paces in the distance, Raif saw Drey's jaw drop.Restring my bow for wood was

exactly the sort of high-blown thing a master bowman would say. Raif could hardly keep from laughing

out loud. Ignoring the insult and the boasting, Drey snorted loudly and began plucking fistfuls of grass

from the tundra. By the time Raif caught up with him, Drey had smeared the grass over the trunk of a

frost-killed pine, forming a roughly circular target, wet with snowmelt and grass sap.

Drey shot first. Stepping back one hundred and fifty paces, he held his bow at arm's length. Drey's

bow was a recurve made of winter-cut yew, dried over two full years, and hand-tillered to reduce shock.

Raif envied him for it. His own bow was a clan hand-down, used by anyone who had the string to brace

it.

Drey took his time sighting his bow. He had a sure, unshakable grip and the strength to hold the string

for as long as his ungloved fingers could bear. Just when Raif was set to call "Shot due," his brother

released the string. The arrow landed with a dullthunk , dead center of the smeared-on target. Turning,

Drey inclined his head at his younger brother. He did not smile.

Raif's bow was already in hand, his arrow already chosen. With Drey's arrow shaft still quivering in

the target, Raif sighted his bow. The pine was long dead. Cold. When Raif tried tocall it to him as he had

with the ice hare, it wouldn't come. The wood stood its distance. Raif felt nothing: no quickening of his

pulse, no dull pain behind his eyes, no metal tang in his mouth. Nothing. The target was just a target.

Unsettled, Raif centered his bow and searched for the still line that would lead his arrow home. Seeing

nothing but a faraway tree, Raif released his string. Straightaway he knew the shot was bad. He'd been

gripping the handle too tightly, and his fingertips had grazed the string on release. The bow shot back with

athwack , and Raifs shoulder took a bad recoil. The arrow landed a good two hands lower than the

target. "Shoot again." Drey's voice was cold.

Raif massaged his shoulder, then selected a second arrow. For luck, he brushed the fletchings against

the raven lore he wore on a cord around his neck. The second shot was better, but it still hit a thumb's

length short of dead center. Raif turned to look at his brother. It was his shot.

Drey made a small motion with his bow. "Again." Raif shook his head. "No. It's your turn."

Drey shook his own head right back. "You sent those two wide on purpose. Now shoot."

'No, I didn't. It was a true shot. I—

• "No one heart-kills three hares on the run, then misses a target as big as a man's chest. No one."

Drey pushed back his fox hood. His eyes were dark. He spat out the wad of black curd he'd been

chewing. "I don't need mercy shots. Either shoot with me fair, or not at all."

Looking at his brother, seeing his big hands pressing hard into the wood of his bow and the whiteness

of his thumbs as he worked on an imagined imperfection, Raif knew words would get him nowhere. Drey

Sevrance was eighteen years old, a yearman in the clan. This past summer he'd taken to braiding his hair

with black leather strips and wearing a silver earring in his ear. Last night around the firepit, when Dagro

Blackhail had burned the scum off an old malt and dropped his earring into the clear liquor remaining,

Drey had done the same. All the sworn clansmen had. Metal next to the skin attracted frostbite. And

everyone in the clan had seen the black nubs of unidentifiable flesh that the 'bite left behind. You could

find many willing to tell the story of how Jon Marrow's member had frozen solid when he was jumped by

Dhoonesmen while he was relieving himself in the brack. By the time he had seen the Dhoonesmen off

and pulled himself up from the nail-hard tundra, his manhood was frozen like a cache of winter meat. By

all accounts he hadn't felt a thing until he was brought into the warmth of the roundhouse and the

stretched and shiny flesh began to thaw. His screams had kept the clan awake all night.

I Raif ran his hand along his bowstring, warming the wax. If Drey needed to see him take a third shot

to prove he wasn't shamming, then take another shot he would. He'd lost the desire to fight.

Again Raif tried to call the dead tree to him, searching for the still line that would guide his arrow to

the heart. Although the blackstone pine had perished ten hunting seasons earlier, it had hardly withered at

all. Only the needles were missing. The pitch in the trunk preserved the crown, and the cold dryness of

the badlands hindered the growth of fungus beneath the bark. Tem said that in the Great Want trees took

hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years to decay.

Seconds passed as Raif concentrated on the target. The longer he held his sights, the deader the tree

seemed. Something was missing. Ice hares were real living things. Raif felt their warmth in the space

between his eyes. He imagined the lode of hot pulsing blood in'their hearts and saw the still line that

linked those hearts to his arrowhead as clearly as a dog sees his leash. Slowly Raif was coming to realize

that still line meant death.

Frustration finally got the better of him, and he stopped searching for the inner heart of the target and

centered his sights on thevisual heart instead. With the fletchings of Drey's arrow in his eyeline, Raif

released the shot.

The moment his thumb lifted from the string, a ravenkaawed . High and shrill, the carrion feeder's cry

seemed to split the very substance of time. Raif felt a finger of ice tap his spine. His vision blurred. Saliva

jetted into his mouth, thick and hot and tasting of metal. Stumbling back, he lost his grip on the bow and it

fell to the ground point first. A crack sounded as it landed. The arrow hit the tree with a dull thud, placing

a knuckle short of Drey's own shot. Raif didn't care. Black points raced across his vision, scorching like

soot belched from a fire.

'Raif! Raif!"

Raif felt Drey's huge, muscular arms clamp around his shoulders, smelled his brother's scent of

neat's-foot oil, tanned leather, horses, and sweat. Glancing up, Raif saw Drey's brown eyes staring into

his. He looked worried. His prized yewbow lay flat on the ground.

'Here, sit." Not waiting for any compliance on Raifs part, Drey forced his younger brother onto the

tundra floor. The frozen earth bit into Raifs buckskin pants. Turning away from his brother, Raif cleared

his mouth of the metal-tasting saliva. His eyes stung. A sickening pain in his forehead made him retch.

He clenched his jaw until bone clicked.

Seconds passed. Drey said nothing, just held his brother as tightly as he could. Part of Raif wanted to

smile; the last time Drey had crushed him like this was after he fell twenty feet from a foxtail pine three

springs back. The fall only broke an ankle. Drey's subsequent bear hug had succeeded in breaking two

ribs.

Strangely, the memory had a calming effect on Raif, and the pain slowly subsided. Raif's vision

blurred sharply and then reset itself. A feeling of badness grew in him. Swiveling around in his brother's

grip, Raif looked in the direction of the camp. The stench of metal washed over him, as thick as grease

smoke from the rendering pits.

Drey followed his gaze. "What's the matter?" His voice was tight, strained.

'Don't you feel it?"

Drey shook his head.

The camp was five leagues to the south, hidden in the shelter of the flood basin. All Raif could see

was the rapidly darkening sky and the low ridges and rocky flats of the badlands. Yet he felt something.

Something unspeakable, as when nightmares jolted him awake in pitch darkness or when he thought

back to the day Tem had shut him in the guidehouse with his mother's corpse. He had been eight at the

time, old enough to pay due respect to the dead. The guidehouse was dark and filled with smoke. The

hollowed-out basswood where his mother lay smelled of wet earth and rotten things. Sulfur had been

rubbed into the carved inner trunk to keep insects and carrion feeders away from the body when it was

laid upon the ground.

Raif smelled badness now. He smelled stinking metal and sulfur and death. Fighting against Drey's

grip, he cried, "We have to go back."

Drey released his grip on Raif and pulled himself to his feet. He plucked his dogskin gloves from his

belt and pulled them on with two violent movements. "Why?"

Raif shook his head. The pain and nausea had gone, but something else had come in its place. A tight

shivering fear. "The camp."

Drey nodded. He took a deep breath and looked set to speak, then abruptly stopped himself.

Offering Raif his hand, he heaved his t brother off the ground with a single tug. By the time Raif had

brushed the frost from his buckskins, Drey had collected both bows and was pulling the arrow shafts

from the dead tree. As he turned away from the blackstone pine, Raif noticed the Retchings in Drey's

grip were shaking. This one small sign of his brother's fear worried Raif more than anything else. Drey

was his older brother by two years. Drey was afraid of nothing.

They had left the camp before dawn, before even the embers on the firepit had burned cold. No one

except Tern knew they had gone. It was their last chance to shoot game before they broke camp and

returned to the roundhouse for winter. The previous night Tern had warned them about going off on their

own in the badlands, though he knew well enough that nothing he said would stop them.

'Sons!" he had said, shaking his large, grizzled head. "I might as well spend my days picking ticks

from the dogs as tell you two what you should and shouldn't do. At least come sundown I'd have a

deloused pup to show for my trouble." Tern would glower as he spoke, and the skin above his eyebrows

would bunch into knots, yet his eyes always gave him away.

Just this morning as Raif pulled back the hide fastening on the tent he shared with his father and

brother, he noticed a small bundle set upon the warming stone. It was food. Hunters' food. Tern had

packed two whole smoke-cured ptarmigan, a brace of hard-boiled eggs, and enough strips of hung

mutton to mend an elk-size hole in a tent. All this for his sons to eat on a hunting trip he had expressly

forbidden them to take.

Raif smiled. Tem Sevrance knew his sons well.

'Put on your gloves." It was Drey, acting just like an older brother. "And pull up your hood.

Temperature's dropping fast."

Raif did what he was told, struggling to put on gloves with hands that felt big and slow. Drey was

right: It was getting colder. Another shiver worked its way up Raif's spine, making his shoulders jerk

awkwardly. "Let's go." Drey's thoroughness was beginning to nettle him. They had to get back to the

camp. Now. Something wasn't right.

Although Tem warned them constantly about the danger of using up all their energy by running in the

cold, Raif couldn't stop himself. Despite spitting profusely, he couldn't remove the taste of metal from his

mouth. The air smelled bad, and the clouds overhead seemed ONES darker, lower,closer . To the south

lay a line of bald, featureless hills, and west of them lay the Coastal Ranges. Tem said that the Ranges

were the reason why the Want and the badlands were so dry. He said their peaks milked every last drop

of moisture from passing storms.

The three hares Raif had shot earlier thumped up and down in his pack as he ran. Raif hated their

warmth against his thigh, was sickened by their fresh-kill smell. When the two brothers came upon Old

Hoopers Lake, Raif tore the pack from his belt and threw it into the center of the dull black water. Old

Hoopers wasn't frozen yet. River fed, it would take a full week of frost before its current-driven waters

plated. Still, the lake had the greasy look of imminent ice about it. As Raifs pack sank to the bottom,

swirls of vegetable oils and tufts of elk hair bobbed up and down on the surface.

Drey swore. Raif didn't catch what he said, but he imagined the wordswaste of fine game in their

place.

As the brothers ran south, the landscape gradually changed. Trees grew straighter and taller, and

there were more of them. Beds of lichen were replaced by long grasses, bushes, and sedge. Horse and

game tracks formed paths through the frozen foliage, and fat grouse flew up from the undergrowth, all

flying feathers and spitting beaks.

Raif barely noticed. Close to the camp perimeter now, they should have been able to see smoke,

hear the sound of metal rasping against metal, raised voices, laughter. Dagro Blackhail's foster son,

Mace, should be riding to greet them on his fat-necked cob.

Drey swore again. Quietly, to himself.

Raif resisted the urge to glance over at his brother's face. He was frightened of what he might see.

A powerful horseman, archer, and hammerman, Drey pulled ahead of Raif as he charged down the

slope to the camp. Raif pushed himself harder, balling his fists and thrusting out his chin. He didn't want to

lose sight of his brother, hated the thought of Drey arriving at the tent circle alone.

Fear stretched over Raifs body like a drying hide, pulling at his skin and gut. They had left thirteen

men standing by at the camp: Dagro Blackball and his son, Mace; Tem; Chad and Jorry Shank; Mallon

Clayhorn and his son, Darri, whom everyone called Halfmast…

Raif shook his head softly. Thirteen men alone on the badlands plains suddenly seemed unbelievably

easy prey. Dhoonesmen, Bludds men, and Maimed Men were out there. Raifs stomach clenched. And

the Sull. The Sull were out there, too.

The dark, weather-stained tents came into view. All was quiet. There were no horses or dogs in

sight. The firepit was a dark gaping hole in the center of the cleared space. Loose tent flaps ripped in the

wind like banners at battle's end. Drey had broken ahead, but now he stopped and waited for Raif to

join him. His breath came hard and fast, and spent air vented from his nose and mouth in great white

streams. He did not look round as Raif approached.

'Draw your weapon," he hissed.

Raif already had, but he scored the blade of his halfsword against its boiled-leather scabbard,

mimicking the noise of drawing. Drey moved forward when he heard it.

They came upon Jorry Shank's body first. It was lying in a feed ditch close to the horse posts. Drey

had to turn the body to find the deathwound. The portion of Jorry's face that had been lying against the

earth had taken on the yellow bloom of frozen flesh. The wound was as big as a fist, heart deep, made

with a greatsword, and for some reason there was hardly any blood.

'Maybe the blood froze as it left him," Drey murmured, settling the body back in place. The words

sounded like a prayer.

'He never got chance to draw his weapon. Look." Raif was surprised at how calm his voice sounded.

Drey nodded. He patted Jorry's shoulder and then stood away.

'There's horse tracks. See." Raif kicked the ground near the first post. He found it easier to

concentrate on what he could see here, on the camp perimeter, than turn his sights toward the tent circle

and the one shabby, oft repaired, hide-and-moose-felt tent that belonged to Tem Sevrance. "Those

shoemarks weren't made by Blackhail horses."

'Bluddsmen use a grooved shoe."

So did other clans and even some city men, yet Raif had no desire to contradict his brother. Clan

Bludd's numbers were swelling, and border and cattle raids had become more frequent. Vaylo Bludd had

seven sons, and it was rumored he wanted a separate clanhold for each of them. Mace Blackhail said

that Vaylo Bludd killed and ate his own dogs, even when he had elk and bear meat turning on the spit

above his fire. Raif didn't believe the story for a moment—to eat one's own dogs was considered a kind

of cannibalism to a clansman, justifiable

only in the event of ice-bound starvation and imminent death—but others, including Drey, did. Mace

Blackhail was three years older than Drey: when he spoke, Drey took heed.

As Drey and Raif approached the tent circle, their pace slowed. Dead dogs lay in the dirt, saliva

frozen around their blunted fangs, their coats shaggy with ice. Fixed yellow eyes stared from massive gray

heads. Glacial winds had set rising hackles in place, giving the dogs' corpses the bunched-neck look of

buffalo. As with Jorry Shank's body, there was little blood.

J. V. Jones - Sword of Shadows 1 - A Cavern of Black Ice

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