"It's spring," Raif replied, knowing his voice sounded strained yet forcing himself to speak anyway. It had not been easy for him to talk to Addie last night and this morning. "You'd think we'd be due some mild weather."
The cragsman frowned at him thoughtfully. "I'm not sure spring's going to come, lad. Not this year."
They were quiet after that. Sitting on opposite sides of the crackling and fragrant cedar fire, blankets pulled tight across their shoulders, they supped on hot, spicy tea.
The remains of the young deer Raif had brought down at sunset had frozen into pink chunks. He'd done a hasty job of the butchering and had not skinned the carcass. Addie had helped, but there was only so much you could do after dark. Neither of them had expected the hard frost, and now most of the meat would have to be either cached or discarded. The pieces were too large to carry and could no longer be divided into smaller parts. They had the liver, which Addie had sliced into squares before he went to sleep, and the remains of the hind leg had been roasted with some of the Trenchlanders' sharp and soapy-tasting herbs. Looking at the frozen hunks of meat with the deer hide still attached Raif wondered if he was any better than the bear trappers. Even the ravens wouldn't be able to feed on it until it thawed.
" I'll put some of it in a wee bag and haul it up the tree," Addie said, showing that he had been following Raif s gaze. "But first we'd better check on those little suckers on your back."
It was not a pleasant few minutes for either of them. Addie had slept with the jar of leeches and had to travel with them close to his body all day. The risk of freezing was too great. Maybe a frozen leech could be revived, maybe it couldn't, but neither of them were taking any chances. They were already down to twenty-one and counting. Twenty after Addie rolled his fingers in the snow to cool them, spoke the three-worded prayer Gods help me and stuck his hand in the jar of black worms. He did not have Flawless' knack for it and gripped the leech midbelly, rather than below either of its sucking heads, and that meant he had to move fast. Two sets of mouth parts wanted a go at him. Raif could do nothing but pull his new rawhide tunic around his shoulders and present his back to Addie Gunn.
The cragsman's breaths were telling: short and wet with disgust. "Keep still," he cautioned, though in truth Raif had not been moving. "Sweet mother of gods."
When it was done the skin on Addie's face was tinged green. "You're gonna need to get that whole mess seen to," he said. "There's half a dozen wounds back there leaking blood, skin's peeling, something's turned black." He shuddered. "We'd better get a move on."
While Addie cached the meat—for no purpose, it seemed, other than treating the slain deer with some respect; neither of them expected to be back here again—Raif broke up the camp.
They had made good time yesterday and were now deep into the rolling cedar forests northwest of the Trenchlanders' camp. Once Raif had brought down the deer, Addie had attempted to locate some kind of meaningful clearing for setting camp, but had been forced instead to call a halt in a fallen timber gap between the trees. The ancient cedar that had toppled had provided partially seasoned wood for the fire and they'd had good, hot flames for roasting and tea-making. The embers were still firing as Raif covered them with snow.
He wished Addie had kept his opinions to himself about his back. With every movement he made he could feel the wrongness; the tight skin where the plaster had been attached, the bloating, the wounds. The teeth. Last night he'd slept on his back and when he'd risen two bloated leeches had dropped onto the blankets. They were slimy with his blood.
"Here," Addie said, startling Raif. "Eat."
Raif took the frozen cube of liver and popped it in his mouth. He sucked on it as they struck a path north through cedars the size of watch towers. It didn't please him very much, but he appreciated Addie's care. Blood for blood.
The rising sun was piercingly bright, illuminating individual ice crystals floating in the air and bringing out the red and purple tones that lay beneath the dark greens of the cedars. The trees had shed their snow and now had frozen moats around the bases of the trunks. If the temperature held trees would be lost. Sudden frosts after thaws could split pines clean in two.
Raif and Addie did not speak as they hiked up the rise, and this suited Raif well enough. He had some thinking to do. Woodpeckers were the only birds making noise in the forest and the sound of them drilling tree bark sharpened and clipped his thoughts.
The Red Ice. The Valley of Cold Mists. Mish'al Nij. The place where he was headed had many names. North, the Trenchlander had said, seeming to think that was instruction enough. Thomas Argola had been even less helpful. "The Lake of Red Ice exists at the border of four worlds and to break it you must stand in all four worlds at once." Raif had found the words so vague and self-important that he had barely thought of them since. To him they were just another of Argola's games.
Yet now he went over them again. Both the outlander and the Trenchlander had mentioned borders. Flawless had said the Red Ice lay on the border of Sull land and Bludd land. The clanholds and the Sulclass="underline" they were two separate worlds.
Could the Want be the third?
Raif ducked his head to avoid a low slung cedar bow. Out of habit he glanced over at Addie, reassuring himself that all was well with the little cragsman. Addie's gaze was focused on the way ahead, reading the paths between the trees, searching out all potential routes.
Perhaps there was a point where Bludd, the Racklands and the Want met? Addie had said the Bludd borders were uncertain this fit: northeast; and. Raif himself had firsthand knowledge of how intangible the margins of the Great Want could be. Perhaps here it dipped south? That might explain why the lake was difficult to find. If any part of it lay within the Want then it was no wonder Bluddsrnen could ride right past it If they didn't there was a chance they would never be seen again.
Feeling one of the leeches stir against his back, Raif shivered and spat out the grizzly remains of the liver. He was wearing two layers of trenchlandcr skins beneath the Orrl cloak, and he had tucked neither of them beneath his gear belt. That way when the gorged leeches disengaged they'd end up falling onto the ground, and not hanging around his waist. Like yesterday. It was possibly the strangest piece of wisdom he'd ever learned.
Knowing he had a short tolerance for leech thoughts, Raif turned his mind back to the Red Ice. If there was a possibility that Thomas Argola's words were right, then there should be a fourth border. Sull. Bhidd. Want. What was the fourth? Was there something he was missing? The Rack lands stretched from the Breaking Grounds to the Sea of Souls; the Trenchlands were contained within them. Did that mean something? Did the Trenchland border come into play?
"Addie," he said. "Where does the Trenchlander border lie?"
The cragsman shrugged. He was in the process of subtly adjusting their route, turning them due north into a mixed stand of spruce and white pine. "Trenchlands just a name. The lowlands around Hell's Town have been carved by the Flow—that's where it gets its name. There's no border as such."
Raif nodded, disappointed. "Is there any way we can tell when we're on the border between Sull and Bludd?"
Addie looked at him. Flawless had given the cragsman the same directions as he had given Raif, and Addie had probably already considered this problem himself. "In this part of the world the only way to know for sure whose land we're standing on is if someone steps out from the trees and attacks us. If that happens we should be sure to take a real good look at them."
Raif fell silent. He fellt stung by Addie's tone. Had he insulted the cragsmanby asking the question? It was hard to judge things with Addie now.