A Cavern of Black Ice (59 page)

"No!" Angus screamed. "No
arrows. Not at the men." Raif, who had taken an arrow from his
case and was in the process of raising it to his bow, halted in
midnocking. Ash frowned. She had thought he had no arrows left. Where
had they come from? As the bay drew nearer she saw the arrow was
crudely shaped, whittled from pine, not hardwood, fletched with
horsehair and tipped with flint. He had made it himself. But when?
Ash answered her own question: while she had slept through the night.

"Do not target the men. Any of
them. Understand?" Angus' voice was harsh as he flanked Moose.
"One of them is a magic user—we have no way of knowing
which. Sight his heart and you give him a weapon to kill you."

"But-"

"No, Raif. Do not question me on
this. There's no time to explain. When the dogs get close, shoot at
them if you must. For now, though, put the arrow away. Distance is
our best protection." With that Angus kicked on ahead, leaving
Raif to the ridge top and the stream. Moments later Ash heard Moose
gaining speed behind them. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Below the ridge, the spruces rippled
like things made out of water, not wood. Ash tried to spot the sept,
but every tree and brush moving in the wind looked like a horseman.
Ahead, the ground began to level off. The stream slowed, and cords of
ice smoke rose from its partially frozen surface. The impact of the
bay's hooves along the bank was enough to crack shore ice as they
passed. Ash's heart beat fast in her chest. There was a fierceness in
her, and she wanted to ride and ride and never stop.

She still couldn't believe she was
free. Sixteen years she had lived in Spire Vanis. Sixteen years of
being watched, cosseted, and confined. All she knew was within the
city; all her dreams had ended five paces south of Vaingate. When she
was younger, Penthero Iss had taken pains to teach her about the
world in which they lived. He had brought her books, beautiful
fantastic books, painstakingly written in High Hand, illustrated by
master engravers, and colored by oathbound scribes. Ash had seen the
tall spiraling form of the Cloistress Tower at Owl's Reach,
surrounded by its ring of petrified trees; she'd studied the ruins at
Morning Star, the giant steps that led nowhere, and the runners of
silver ivy that climbed them year by year; she'd gazed upon the vast
stonefields of Trance Vor, the iron cairns sunk deep into the soil of
Hanging Valley, the Towerlode at Linn, the sheer cliffs that rose
around Raven Head, and the golden walls of Ille Glaive with their
windows shaped like tears. She had seen the world from those books,
yet she had never once dreamed she'd be part of it.

Spire Vanis was her home. Mask Fortress
was her home. Now she was riding around a lake she had only read of
in books, on her way to a city she knew only through lines of ink.
She supposed it felt like freedom, if freedom was a fall into the
unknown.

"Cross the stream!" Angus
called. Raif was ahead of them again, leading Moose along the bank
with a tight rein. On Angus' word, he descended the shallow slope to
the water's edge.

The stream was frozen along its banks,
yet green water still ran at its center, frothing over unseen rocks.
Ash feared for Moose. She saw his hooves break rotten ice, watched
his momentary hesitation as he fought his natural instinct to back
away. Raif stroked his neck, spoke soft words that Ash couldn't hear.
Slowly Moose moved forward through the shore ice into the center of
the stream.

The bay, who as far as Ash could tell
had a name that Angus preferred no one to know, knew no such fear. It
was almost as if he had been ice trained, for he seemed to
test
the ice before he broke it. When they came to a small runoff pool
where the water was mostly undisturbed by the stream's current, the
bay made no attempt to break the ice at all: He simply knew it was
thick enough to take the combined weight of himself and his riders.
Angus said nothing during the process, but Ash could tell he was
proud of his horse as he scratched the bay's neck and shoulders
continually.

As they scrambled out of the ice on the
far side of the stream, the lead hound broke from the trees. Snapping
and snarling, it made for the bank, its orange-and-black body humped
with ribs, its docked tail quivering like a second snout. A second
emerged a moment later, then another. Suddenly the sound of their
calls was unbearable. The pitch changed, growing higher and more
frenzied. They had the quarry in their sights.

Angus turned the bay in the last of the
ice. Freezing water splashed as high as Ash's face. The bay's tail
whipped against her thighs.

"Carry on along the bank!"
called Angus to Raif. "They'll cross long that way. If we're
lucky, we'll lose some to the water."

Ash didn't understand what he meant,
but Raif did and he turned Moose quickly, staying as close to the
stream as he could. With Moose's hooves barely a pace above the shore
ice, horse and rider broke into a gallop. Angus followed suit, the
bay keeping perfect pace. Ash risked glancing back, then wished she
hadn't. Half a dozen dogs swarmed like wasps on the far bank. Yellow
teeth glinted in ice-reflected light. Pink-and-black gums wet with
saliva reminded her of scorched flesh.

As Moose and the bay picked up speed,
the dogs began to shadow them along the bank. Soon Ash didn't need to
turn her head to see the dogs, as they pulled level with Moose within
a matter of seconds. Only the stream separated them now. Then, as Ash
looked, the first of the dogs scrambled onto the shore ice. Ash dug
her fingernails into Angus' buckskin coat to stop herself from crying
out. The dog skidded over the ice effortlessly, its weight not great
enough to break the surface. Others followed, howling and shaking
their heads like things possessed.

Only when they entered the water did
Ash begin to understand what Angus had meant by "crossing long."
The dogs, seeing how their quarry was racing ahead of them while they
splashed in the water, actually began swimming
upstream
,
rather than take the shortest route across. If Angus had simply
ridden away from the stream and out of the dogs' sights, the dogs
would have crossed in a straight line. This way he tormented them
into trying to keep pace.

Not all the dogs were fooled, and some
began to swim through the froth toward the far bank. Seeing their
sleek wet heads bobbing toward the shore ice, Raif reined in Moose.
"Keep going!" he shouted to Angus as he kicked Moose onto
the rise above the bank. Already he had one of the pine arrows in his
hand.

Ash felt Angus' body stiffen. He drew
breath to speak yet stopped himself at the last moment, perhaps
deciding it was better not to repeat his earlier warning. Despite
Raif's cry, he pulled on the bay's reins, slowing the gelding to a
trot. "How many dogs?"

It took Ash a moment to realize Angus
was speaking to her. She glanced over her shoulder at the stream. One
dog had already reached the far shore and was shaking its body
viciously, spraying a fine mist of water droplets into the air.
Another two dogs were skating over the shore ice toward the bank. A
fourth was trying to scramble onto the ice from the water but was
obviously tired, as the current kept tugging it back. A fifth dog was
still in the free-flowing water at the center of the stream, paddling
furiously. The sixth had fallen back. Ash watched as its small head
went under, saw panic in its amber eyes as it emerged once more from
the froth.
Thuc
.

Glancing in the direction of the soft,
knuckle-snapping sound, Ash saw Raif sitting high in his saddle, his
left arm absorbing the shock of the recoiling bow, his eyes focused
on the bank below. The first dog was dead. Ash pressed her hand
against her mouth, holding her breath. It was a terrible thing…
terrible
… to be able to kill another being so
surely.

"Five dogs," she heard her
voice say. Even as she spoke, Raif's second arrow found another
heart.

As the third dog tore toward Raif, the
spruces on the far bank came alive with noise and movement. Branches
thrashed air, snow spewed upward in a glittering arc. Seven
silhouettes came into view. Swift moving, dark as beasts that hunted
by night, they rode in a close V formation with only the space of a
child's hand between them. The Rive Watch. Ash had seen them ride
that way before, watching them from the high windows of the Cask as
they drove a wedge into an armed and angry mob. A man had been hung,
a popular rogue and ladies' man, and the people of Spire Vanis had
taken offense at his death. Not the fact of his death, rather the
manner of it, for Penthero Iss had ordered his handsome face cut off
and then stitched on backward. Ash swallowed hard. Sometimes her
foster father did things like that just to see what such horrors
would look like.

The riot had been quelled within an
hour. Marafice Eye had spearheaded the first sept. Just the
rumor
of his presence had been enough to take the fight from the crowd. No
one in the city, not even Penthero Iss, was stupid enough not to fear
the Knife.

No, Raif!" Angus screamed at the
top of his voice. "No more shooting!" He spun the bay,
depriving Ash of her view of the sept.

Ash lost sense of what was happening as
she was forced to hang on to Angus as they crashed through shore ice
and frozen reeds toward Raif. Suddenly a dog exploded from nowhere.
Ash felt air pump against her thigh, then the dog's muzzle sprang
open, ripping hair and skin from the bay's rump. The horse screamed
and bucked. Angus bunched the reins in his fist. "Take the knife
from my belt."

Ash did as she was told. The dog danced
around the bay's rear hooves, then launched itself once more at its
rump. Ash's only thought was for the bay. Already she could see two
holes full of blood where the dog's canines had bit deepest. Anger
made her lash out violently, uselessly, at the dog's snout. Angus
whipped the bay's head back, making the horse wheel so quickly, the
dog was left snapping air. Ash cursed her own uselessness.

"Wait until its snout touches
horseflesh." Angus' voice was low, almost threatening. His teeth
were clenched.

Ash readjusted her grip on the knife.
The hilt was carved from root-wood, but some unseen metal at the
center made it heavy in the hand. As she waited for the dog to
attack, she risked glancing back across the stream. The sept was
clear of the trees now. The lead rider shouted an order, and the V
bore down upon the stream. The leader was huge, dressed in the black
and the red of the Watch, with the Killhound sewn above his heart and
a black iron bird helm forming a cage around his face. Ash looked
into the shadows behind the helm, and slowly, so slowly, her belly
shrank to the size of a fist. Marafice Eye rode at the head of the
sept.

Something dark streaked below her. A
muzzle packed with teeth came straight for her thigh. Ash shifted
back in horror. Small orange eyes closed in self-protection as the
dog sank its fangs into her thigh. Shock and pain tore through her
like a jolt from a lance. Hot tears filled her eyes. Rage drove the
knife. She hardly knew what she was doing, hardly bothered to place
the blow, yet she drove the blade in with all the force she
possessed. Bone split with a wet crack. The dog's eyes opened, and
its jaws sprang apart. As the creature fell away from her body, Ash
yanked the knife back. She wasn't about to lose her blade to a dead
dog.

"I said horseflesh. Not
girlflesh." Angus seemed angry. He drove the bay up the slope in
silence, making his way toward Raif. Ash held her hand to her thigh
and pressed. She was angry herself. She had expected Angus to praise
her.

Raif waited for them at the top of the
hill. He had stowed his bow and now had a short double-edged sword in
his hand. Two dogs lay butchered by Moose's hocks. Both Moose and
Raif were scratched and bloody. Raif was breathing heavily, and his
face was all angles and grayness.
It takes something from him
,
she thought with cold certainty.
Killing the things he does, the
way he does, hurts him in some way
.

Catching a glimpse of something dark
and sparkling over his shoulder, Ash strained to see more. The Black
Spill stretched out in the valley below them like a beast under
glass. Ledges of ice crusted the shoreline, supporting great frozen
piers that extended toward the heart of the lake and the black
steaming water that ran there. A haze of mist floating above the
surface mirrored each curve and break of the shore, forming a ghost
lake above the Spill.

Ash breathed softly, letting her hand
relax against her thigh. The eastern shore of the Black Spill, where
the Maker of Souls had shown himself to the Condemned Man, Rob Ruce,
who went on to take Ille Glaive; where the Red Priest had washed his
hands of the blood of the Five Sisters, who saw visions and spoke in
Old Tongue; where Samrel of Spire Vanis had met to exchange hostages
with the Clan King Hoggie Dhoone; and where Sorissina of the Elms had
drowned beneath the ice as she followed her lover's calls into the
mist. Ash sat, transfixed for the briefest moment, and watched the
play of light and shadow on the surface of the lake. She had always
felt a kinship for Sorissina of the Elms: She had been a foundling,
too.

"Cut the saddlebags."

Ash was brought back to the present by
the sound of Angus' voice. Before she could decide whether or not he
was speaking to her, he jumped down from the horse. His boots
crunched snow as he moved to inspect the wounds on the bay's rump. "I
said
cut the saddlebags."

Ash exchanged a glance with Raif.

Both of you. Hurry. Ash. Move forward
into the saddle." Angus opened the saddlebag on his near side
and took out a handful of small hide-bound packages, then slipped
them beneath his tunic. He moved quickly, continually looking over
his shoulder to check the progress of the sept.