They stopped three times before noon for leech duty. One of the creatures wouldn't attach itself to Raif's back;, it looked as sick as a leech could look. Addte returned it to the jar, but they were both thinking the same thing: Spoilage had not been factored into the equation.
At noon they had a good meal of roasted venison and salted hard-bread that had been traded from the Trenchlanders. The cold was numbing so they ate with their gloves on. Afterward they greased their skin and slid on face masks. As they headed out, the first of the cedars exploded in the valley below them. The woodpeckers fell silent and the only sound was Raif s and Addie's boots crunching frozen snow.
After a few hours the land began to rise and warp, and bare rock broke through the forest duff. The cedars were not as tall here, and enough light penetrated the canopy to support groundcover; hagber-ries, bearberries, and balsam. Raif perceived animals denning beneath rotting logs and between cracks in the rocks. Their heartbeats were faint and winter-slow.
Raif tried not to think about his own heart, tried not to recall how easily it had failed him. One moment beating, the next stopped. A blink of an eye, a failure of muscle to contract: that's all it took to kill a man.
He forced his mind elsewhere, and ended up considering the name Yiselle No Knife had given to the Red Ice. Mish'al Nij. A place of no cloud, yet the lamb brothers had named it the Valley of Cold Mists.
More trees exploded as the sun moved into the west. One cracked right on the path, its trunk fracturing from the crown to the base as if it had been hit with a giant ax. The sudden release of pitch and gases made the air smell like a primed firestack.
As the sky grew dark Addie began to rest more heavily on his stick, and Raif thought about calling an early halt. Progress had not been good; nearly every hour they'd had to stop to apply leeches and Addie was getting no quicker with practice. His hands froze, Raifs back froze, the leeches were starting to get sluggish. Just as Raif opened his mouth to speak, Addie raised his stick.
"Stand of red pines beyond the rocks,"
The sign of the Bludd border. They headed west toward it, their spirits lifting. Here was a marker that could help them. The trees were planted along a north-south axis in angle file along a south-racing slope. It was— dark by the time rhey reached them, and you could no longer tell they were red pines.
"Let's set camp" Addie said, smiling for the first time in two days. "I think this calls for a spot of tea."
They set camp hard against the pines, both fearing that if they didn't the trees might disappear in the night. A new leech was applied, a fire built. Roasted meat was set to warm on rocks.
As they sat, bending their heads toward the searing heat of the fire and enjoying the dregs of the tea, Raif s raven lore stirred. It had been so long since the hard, black piece of bird ivory had moved he had not spared it a thought in weeks. Some disturbance in his heart or blood triggered the leeches, and the two that were attached to him dropped off. Raif stood, his hand feeling for Traggis Mole's longknife.
Addie rose a moment later, and both men pulled their bows and arrowcases from the gear pile that had been lazily heaped on broken-off cedar boughs. Swiftly they pulled off gloves. Neither spoke. Things had changed between them. But not this.
With his gaze facing out from the fire, the cragsman tugged at the cedar boughs, tumbling packs and blankets into the snow. Without looking at the flames he fed them. Raif faced north, toward a slope he could barely see. The stars were out in cold lightless force. There was no moon.
Crack.
Both men swung to face the sound of an exploding tree. In Sull territory: they could say that with conviction now as the noise came from east of the red pines. Addie Gunn and Raif Sevrance trained drawn bows into the darkness. Addie's sturdy self-made yew ticked with a reassuring sound as it held tension. The Sull longbow made no sound.
When a soft crackling noise came from the west neither one was expecting it. Addie swung around and immediately loosed his bow through the pines. Raif perceived the damning suction of an unmade heart.
And then felt its small and deadly echo a hair breadth away from his own. The Shatan Maers claw was trying to home.
Leeches are my friends, he thought inanely, his gaze searching for forms in the blackness. Addie raised a second arrow to the plate, and as he pulled back the twine Raif became aware of a second heart. Back in Sull territory, moving forward from a position not far from where the tree had exploded. Quickly he made a calculation. Swinging his attention fully east he left the creature on the other side of the red pines for Addie Gunn.
East was where the greatest threat lay. He could feel it in his lore and his plagued and punctured heart. A shape rippled into existence, then disappeared. It was big and man-shaped and Raif did not want it near him. Ever since the night on the rimrock he'd had no trust in hand-to-hand combat with blades. Let the Sull bow and the case-hardened arrowheads do the work.
Keep away, he murmured under his breath. Keep away.
Suddenly there was a series of crunches to the west. Addie loosed a second arrow, rumbled, replated. The footfalls accelerated, smashing the frozen snow with their force. Raif could no longer stand it and swung to second his friend.
Both men loosed their arrows in perfect time. A single thuc sounded with the depth and richness of a musical chord. The arrowheads converged … and slammed together in the unmade heart. Sparks shot out of shadowflesh. Something not human jerked upward and then collapsed. A sound on the edge of hearing sizzled through the forest air.
Pivoting east on the balls of his feet, Raif reloaded and drew his bow. The cragsman was a half-second behind him. Flames shivered at their backs, casting fans of jittery shadows at their feet. Clouds of bitter smelling smoke pumped outward from the fire stack; items from their gear pile were going up in flames.
Raif scanned the darkness for the man-shaped thing's heart. His own heart was fluttering queerly, and he could feel the shadowflesh burning through it like a hot ember set upon wax. All was still. Addie's breaths were ragged, but his grip on the bow was rock-firm. The moon began to rise above the treeline, its light beaming in their faces and moving between the trees. Without realizing it both men edged away from the camp. Addie was taking Raifs lead, and Raif was moving in the direction he'd last seen the Unmade.
The fire went out. Darkness was sudden and complete. Flattened coals popped and spat. Something hot landed by Raifs heel. He and Addie swung back to face the killed fire. Addie let an arrow fly into the swirling blackness of night and smoke. Raif understood the impulse but held. He knew exactly how long it took him to reload and draw a bow. It was too long. An eyeblink, that was the difference between life and death.
The man-shaped thing rushed them. It pushed its own shape before it in smoke. Moonlight bent toward its thick diamond-shaped blade. Raif loosed his arrow. Even before the twine recoiled he had thrown down the bow. The arrowhead had penetrated heart muscle but it had not gone deep enough into the gristle and the thing still came at them.
"Addie. Get back," he heard himself scream as Traggis Moe's longknife scribed the quarter-circle from his hip to a position at right-angle to his chest. Raif saw the creature's hollow, craving eyes. Heard the explosive crack of its weight coming down upon jane needles suspended in ice. Its blade had to be four feet long. Raif's was two.
Raif leaped forward, feinted right. The man-shaped thing swung his sword at him like a club. It was screeching like a seagull. Raif stepped behind ft, made the thing turn. Voided steel came at him: its edge the glistening razor where chaos and destruction met. It stunk like the absence of all things. Raif rolled ahead of it, felt it touch his lower rib. Life heat sucked from the hole. Springing up Raif braced the Mole's longknife against the hard plate where muscle met bone in the exact center of his ribcage. The man-thing was yanking back its blade for another strike. There was air around its chest.