"Jones, J V - Sword Of Shadows 02 - A Fortress Of Gray Ice V2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones J. V)

In three quick strides he was before her, the point of his sword pressing against the plump flesh of her lower lip. “Open your mouth, witch. Let me see the tongue that lies so easily. I’d heard witches could charm the sword from a man’s hand, but I never thought to see such a thing myself.” His last words were directed at the gathered clansmen, and to a man they straightened and raised their swords. No clever-speaking witch was going to fool them.
“Your father was a good man, Effie Sevrance,” cried hard-eyed Turby Flapp. “You do him a disservice by defending yourself at his expense. What man here hasn’t clashed with another over kills? It’s not something you bring home to the women. Let them tend to their traps, not the hunt.”
Cries of “Aye!” circled the room. Turby Flapp was old and shaking, yet Effie could still see the triumph in his eyes. He’d insulted her and her father, and fired the men with righteous rage.
Mace Blackhail had chosen well.
Oh, she knew why he wasn’t here, in this room. His hands must be seen to be clean. When Drey came to him, as Drey certainly would, Mace could say, Drey, if I’d been there I would have stopped it. I was holding vigil around the Great Hearth. I had no idea what these men would do.
Effie felt the bite of Stanner’s sword as it split her lip, sending a line of blood trickling down her chin. Immediately a shift took place in the room. Breaths came hard and fast as sweating palms made it necessary to alter grips. Blood had been spilled. All hope of mercy was lost.
Stanner Hawk’s mouth tightened in satisfaction, and with a kingly gesture he withdrew his sword. “Wracker,” he said to one of the Scarpe swordsmen. “Feed the hound through the hole.”
Wracker Fox was powerful in the way Shor Gormalin had been powerful; small and lean and so swift to movement that it was like watching a hare bolt from a set. In an instant he was gone from the forge. What seemed like seconds later he was back, something wrapped in a blanket held fast against his chest.
Effie thought her heart would stop when she heard the first frightened whimper. They had caught and bound one of the shankshounds.
Wracker Fox dropped the dog onto the floor to free it from the blanket. The dog’s legs and snout had been tightly hobbled with tarred rope, and the creature landed badly on its side. Effie flinched. It was Old Scratch, the gentle, dignified elder of the pack. Wounds around his eyes and jaw told he hadn’t been taken without a fight.
Stanner Hawk said, “Put him in feet-first, like we will the girl.”
A sound left Effie’s throat, a sound so soft and powerless that no man in the room paid it heed . . . but it was enough for Old Scratch to hear her and know that she was there. Slowly and at great cost, he turned his large amber eyes upon her.
Never, ever, if she lived for a thousand years would Effie Sevrance forget that look. Terror and love touched her with such force it was as if she were inside the dog’s head. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. The shankshounds had saved her life.
“Stop,” she murmured to Stanner Hawk. “Set the dog free and I’ll give you what you want.”
Stanner ran a pale hand over his dark beard, and then exchanged a small satisfied glance with Turby Flapp. Turning his back on her once more, he said, “So you admit you are a witch as charged. And that you aided Clan Bludd in the attack upon Dagro Blackhail in the Badlands, and the assassination of Shor Gormalin in the Wedge. You admit also that you helped your brother Raif Sevrance desert this clan, and heard him confess that cowardice drove him from the ambush on the Bluddroad. Lastly you confess that you bewitched Orwin Shank’s hounds, and forced them to attack an innocent man and woman for no other reason than you feared they knew you for a witch.” Stanner Hawk was suddenly there, in front of her face, his smile so cold it chilled her. “Do you admit these sins, Effie Sevrance, before the faces of nine gods?”
Da, I didn’t do them. Effie looked at Old Scratch, then quickly looked away. She found she couldn’t face the dog and lie. Stanner Hawk was something different and she tilted her chin and raised her gaze and looked him full in the eye. “I admit I am a witch before the faces of nine gods.”
Breath was sucked in around the room. Some of the older clansmen touched their tines. One man, ancient and stoop-backed, Ezander Straw, began to name the nine gods. Ganolith, Hammada, Ione, Loss, Uthred, Oban, Larannyde, Malweg, Behathmus.
Flames from the furnace leapt high, sending waves of heat switching wildly around the room. The mud in the trough boiled madly, slapping and sucking as the water within it turned to steam. Stanner Hawk’s pale lips twitched. His knuckles were white where they curled around his sword. Still holding Effie’s gaze he said, “Craw, send the dog to the fire.”
“No,” she breathed. Then louder, “NO!”
“Yes,” he hissed. “I make no covenants with a witch.”
“But . . . you said. The dog . . .”
Turby Flapp stepped forward and slapped her face. “Hush, girl. ‘Chant us no more with your lies.”
Frantic with terror and helplessness, Effie didn’t feel the pain of the blow. She couldn’t find the words to save Old Scratch. They said . . . they said . . . Old Scratch isn’t used to the heat. He’s afraid of lit candles . . . I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Da. Didn’t have the words.
Craw Bannering hefted the dog against his chest. Air venting from the charging hole shimmered with heat. The fire crackled and roared, releasing showers of white-hot sparks. Twenty-four men fell silent. No one except the bowman moved. The smith’s gloves reached as high as Craw’s upper arms, protecting him from the flames as he fed the dog to the furnace.
The heat was so great in the smelting chamber that fire ignited from dry air. Old Scratch screamed, thrashing and jerking, his eyes wide with terror as he fought to buck himself free. When the first flames found his flesh he let out a terrible moan. Effie watched, waited, knowing the dog’s gaze would come to her, determined in every part of her that she would not look away.
Old Scratch’s eyes were dimming when they found her, yet the same thing she had seen before was there. Faith. He thought she could save him. Even now.
Effie felt tears run down her face as the last of the dog went to the fire. Something hard and terrible was growing within her, and she felt the first stirrings of rage. Eyes darting, she studied the men who formed a circle around her. Their attention was given fully to the thrashing thing alive with flames. Slowly, slowly, she moved two paces to the side, put her foot on Bitty’s flint knife, and sent a hand down her leg to scratch her knee. In an instant the knife was hers. Straightening, she checked the two Hailsmen behind her; their gazes hadn’t shifted from the smelting chamber.
As the smell of singed fur and roasting meat filled the room, Effie found her grip on the blade. Men were shifting now, rubbing their eyes as if woken from a dream. When Stanner Hawk turned to face her she was ready.
“Witch. May the fire go no gentler on you.” He motioned to the two Scarpemen, Uriah Scarpe and Wracker Fox. “Seize and bind her. Let her go awake and repentant to the flames.”
As the two Scarpemen moved to flank her, Effie showed her knife. Sweeping the blade in a circle before her, she spoke in a shaky voice. “Stay back. You’ll not find me as defenseless as a dog.”
Someone close to the door snorted. Uriah Scarpe stretched thin weasel lips to a smirk. Wracker Fox danced back in mock fright. “Well, well, my little Blackhail hellcat. I see you’ve a fancy for a fight.”
Stanner Hawk wasn’t amused. “Burn her and be done.”
“Aye,” added Turby Flapp. “Allow her no chance to do more witchery this night.”
Effie felt her face burn. Stupid, stupid. How could she have thought they’d be afraid of a girl with a stone knife? That was when she saw Uriah Scarpe’s gaze return to her lore. The granite stone was twitching with force, moving the wool fabric of her dress. She watched fear enlarge the Scarpeman’s pupils . . . and then she knew what she must do.
Remember they think I’m a witch.
Still holding the knife firm, she swept down and grabbed the bowl of iron juice from the floor. Before any clansman had chance to react she dipped the blade of her knife into the swirling fluid. A thousand pores in the flint soaked up the black. The blade emerged glistening and smoking, like a piece of frozen night. Almost when she saw it she felt afraid herself, for the look of it stirred memories within her that she did not know she had. But then Da’s smell was upon it; the smell of barley too old and honey nearly off and peat that had been burned, not smoked. It gave her strength and heart, and when she spoke all fear was gone.
“This,” she said holding up the coated blade for all to see, “is dark magic I distilled myself. One drop upon your skin and your soul is mine. Your teeth will rot and your sword hands will wither, and your man seed will come out black.” She paused, sending a silent prayer of thanks to Letty Shank for inspiring that particular horror, and then carried on, imagining Anwyn Bird in a rage over something to help her voice come out right. “If you value your lives you’d best let me walk free from this place, or I swear I’ll cast this bowl down and splash every one of you, and take your souls with me to hell.”
Silence. Someone coughed. Turby Flapp went to speak then was still. Some of the younger men began to edge back. Uriah Scarpe brought his swordhand down to protect his man parts. Effie waited, knife in hand, bowl tucked into the crook of her arm . . . and stared every one of them down.
Stanner Hawk’s face was a tight mask. Of the twenty-four men in the room he was the only one who knew she was no witch. She saw him weigh all possible outcomes. Call her a trickster and everything that had taken place here was voided. She was either witch or trickster; she could not be both. To speak up would be to contradict himself. And then there was the likely possibility that they’d pay him no heed. Real fear lived in this room; if Effie could see that so could he.
In the end his decision was taken for him. Wracker Fox stepped away from her, saying to Stanner, “You take care of the Hailish bitch. I’m not going to touch her.” As soon as he spoke, murmurs of agreement passed through the room, and the four men securing the doorway moved aside. Other clansmen stirred and within moments a path had cleared toward the door.
Something terrible must have been showing on her face when she walked the clearing, for not one of them would meet her eye. Turby Flapp let his poorly weighted sword clatter to the floor and grabbed the tine containing his measure of powdered guidestone with both hands. The Scarpemen made gestures she did not recognize, strange wardings in the shape of poison pines. When she passed Stanner Hawk he whispered, “Never sleep in this roundhouse again, Effie Sevrance, else my knife will find you the moment you shut your eyes.”
She said nothing in reply. She did not trust herself to speak. Everything in her was intent on making it toward the door. Thoughts of Old Scratch kept her hands steady and made her eyes blaze with their own kind of fire.
Later she could remember nothing of the journey along the Dry Run and out of the roundhouse. Two thoughts only held her: Old Scratch’s faith that she could save him, and the dull and terrible certainty that the Stone Gods would send ice into the heart of the Hailstone for the wrongs done by clansmen this night.

CHAPTER SIX
Becoming Sull
They entered the mountain on the fourth day, and although it was virtually impossible to tell in which direction they moved, Ash had a feeling they were no longer traveling east.
“We head east to the Racklands then south to the Heart,” had been all Ark Veinsplitter had said about the journey. She had not questioned him. It had been the morning of their departure, when the sun barely showed itself on the eastern horizon and starlight lit the ice and turned it blue. There had been no sleep for her the night before in the Listener’s ground, just terrible hours of wakefulness, knowing that she would soon leave Raif, and knowing also that she could not explain why. Speak to him of it and she would have been undone. He would have argued, persuaded, changed her mind. And he would have done it because he loved her. And it would have been a mistake.
She was Sull now; their battles were hers. Her flesh was rakhar dan, reachflesh. And it owed a debt for what it had done.
She could not bring Raif with her on this journey. The Sull Far Riders would not have it; they had no love for the man they called the Clansman. Yet their reasons were not her reasons. She would not have Raif because he had already done enough, risked enough, and she was traveling into darkness . . . and she would travel that road alone. She would not endanger him. It was as simple and as complicated at that.