Raifs thoughts drifted into a dark place. Falling, he thought of the men he had killed: some named and many nameless. Bluddsmen, city men, the lone Forsworn knight in a redoubt filled with death. Thirst followed him down, gnawing, gnawing, like a rat at the back of his throat. His lips had shriveled to husks and when he smiled at something playing in the darkness they cracked and bled. Pain brought him back. Blinking like a man shaken suddenly awake, Raif looked around. The Want had shifted. Something subtle had changed, a rotation of perspective or a shortening of distance: he could not decide which. The mountain ridge that they'd been heading toward all day was now upon them, looming dark and rugged and barren. Part of Raif had been hoping to find glaciers in the high valleys but from here he could tell that he'd badly misjudged the ridge's ele-vation. What he'd imagined were mountains were little more than spine-backed hills.
Without warning the wound in his right shoulder sent out a bolt of white-hot pain. Knee joints turning to jelly, he instantly dropped to the ground. The headland's limestone had given way to softer chalkstone and Raif fell into a bed of pulverized chalk. Massaging his shoulder' he hacked up freezing dust.
Bear came over, anxiously prodding him with her head. The little hill pony had a frothy scum around her lips, and her tongue was now too big for her mouth. It lolled to the side, black and bloated. Raif thought about his sword.
If not now. Soon.
Flinging his left arm around her neck, he allowed her to pull him to his feet. A queer tingle of pain shot along his shoulder as he dusted chalk from his cloak. It was losing its capacity to worry him. He needed water. Bear needed water and shelter—her exposed tongue would be frozen meat within an hour. Worry about anything other than those two things was becoming beyond him. Ignoring the pain, he moved forward.
The point where the headland joined with the ridge was a quicksand of chalk and gravel. Walking on the chalk was similar to walking on dry, powdery snow. With every step Bear sank up to her hocks, sometimes further. Initially the heavier gravel was suspended across the chalk like lily pads over water, and both Raif and Bear learned caution. The gravel might hold, suspended beneath the surface by more gravel, or it could sink so fast it created suction. Every step was an ordeal. Every couple of steps one of them had to halt to pull out sunken feet or hooves.
When his right eyeball started to sting, Raif realized he was beginning to sweat. Baked dry by the sun and stiffened by the frost, his cornea seized up the moment salty fluid from his temple slid into his eye socket. His hands and face were now numb, so when he ran a fist across his forehead and his glove came back wet it was a shock.
He was losing too much water. Swallowing hard, he forced himself to stop and think. Ahead, the gravel bank darkened as the charcoal granite of the spineback hills began to peek through. Farther along an entire ridge emerged, rising from the sea of stones and broadening into a rock mass that fused with the first hill, There, Raif decided We'll go as far as the junction. The high vantage point would enable them to see what lay ahead.
If there's no water we're damned.
It was the fast clear thought he had until nightfall Bear began wheezing during the climb across the gravel banks, a sharp little piping noise that sounded as if it were coming from a broken flute And she shied for the first time. When they reached a deep chute filled with younger, sharper scree she refused to cross it, digging in her back hooves and weakly tossing her head. Raif went on ahead awhile, but she wouldn't follow, even when he called her, and he was forced to go back. Light was beginning to fail, and more than anything else he did not want to lose sight of her. He feared the landscape might shift while he wasn't looking and the Want would cancel her out.
It was becoming hard to think. There should have been a way around the chute—he even saw it once, laid out like a treasure map before him—but he couldn't keep the facts in his head. Bear didn't want to walk through the jagged scree. The chute was narrow. Maybe they could double back …
He lost time. Standing on the hillside, thoughts stalled, he was aware only of the intense cold. Ice twinkled in his eyelashes when he blinked. Something—he couldn't say what—snapped him back. For an instant he wasn't glad; everything took too much effort here. It was easier to drift. Yet when he saw Bear he felt shamed. The little pony was standing where he had left her, shaking and making that little piping noise when she inhaled.
"Come on, girl" he coaxed, trudging toward her through shin-high gravel. "Not far now. We'll go down a bit and then around." He didn't know if they could make it that way, but it hardly seemed to matter anymore Doing was better than thinking in this place.
Night fell in layers. The sun hung on the farthest edge of the horizon and smoldered A dusk of long shadows made it difficult to see the way forward. Overhead the first of the big northern stars ignited in a sky turning deep-sea blue. Raif had taken to plowing the breath ice from his nose and chin and shoveling it into his mouth. The moisture it rendered wasn't sufficient to be called liquid, but the sensation of fizzy coolness on his tongue was deeply pleasing. When he tried, to perform the same service for Bear, she shied away from him. Blood was oozing from a cut on her back heel, and she'd started to carry her head and tail low. She wouldn't go much farther, he realized.
He owed her a decent end. As he peered through the darkness toward the turn of the hill his spirits sank. They'd barely made any progress since sunset, simply retraced their steps from the chute. Glancing from his sword to Bear, he made a decision. One hour. No more.
He was gentle with her as they took their final climb.
Starlight lit the hillside, making the rocks glow blue. Raif thought about how he'd first met Bear—she'd been a replacement for the horse he'd lost in canyon country west of the Rift—and how she had carried him to the Fortress of Grey Ice. She had kept him sane, he knew that now. After the raid on the silver mine at Black Hole he was nearly lost. Bitty's death had been too much to bear.
Raif girded himself for the memories. He would not fight them off or deny them: Bitty Shank, son of Orwin and sworn clansman of Blackhail, deserved better than that. He had not deserved to die at the hands of a fellow clansman.
Oathbreaker, Raif named himself, his lips moving. That morning on the greatcourt he had sworn to protect his clan … and he had not protected them.
He had killed them.
Raif sucked in air, welcoming the cold into cavities close to his heart. He was damned. And how should a damned man live his life?
A crunching sounding to his left brought him back. Swinging around, he saw that Bear had stumbled to her knees. Oh gods. He scrambled over to her, not caring where he placed his feet. Nightfall had sharpened the frost and walking through the gravel was like wading through sea ice. Bear was shivering intensely. Her eyes tracked him as he approached, and everything he saw in them told him he could not wait any longer.
"Little Bear," he said softy. "My best girl."
She was cool to the touch. Even now, she pushed her head toward his hand as he stroked her cheek. Kneeling, he moved his body alongside her, wanting to give her his heat. Her heart was beating out of time; he could feel it against his chest. Gently, he rubbed the ice from her nose. She was calm now; they both were.
"My best little Bear."
Raif kissed her eyes closed and drew his sword. No one in the Known World could deliver a death blow with such accuracy and force, and for the first time in his eighteen-year life Raif Sevrance was grateful for that fact.
It was a mercy for both of them.
Curling himself around her cooling body, he lay and rested for a while in the Want.
TWO The Sundering