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

They were sitting in the Listener’s ground, the whale lamp between them casting the softest kind of light. As far as he could tell it was early evening. The Listener had been gone for two days, for the hunters were out upon the ice and they had spotted no seals in half a moon, and Sadaluk was needed to listen for them. The old man had seemed pleased at the opportunity to leave Raif alone, and had extracted a solemn promise that Raif would not leave until he returned. Raif hadn’t understood the sly twinkle in the Listener’s eye, but looking at the girl dressed in soft sealskins before him he thought he might now. Her name was Sila, and she was plump and beautiful with waist-long hair and black eyes.
Only a dead man cannot surprise you. Raif made a sound in his throat. It seemed the Listener made a habit out of such surprises.
The girl had brought him food for the past two nights, and had visited many times to tend the lamp. The long wick needed to be carefully managed so it didn’t die out or smoke, and Raif noticed there were many opportunities for Sila to show off her plumpness, bending and crouching as she fed the little wick-seeds to the oil. She was as unlike Ash as it was possible to be: warm-skinned and warm-eyed, and ready with shy laughter. Ash is gone. Gone. So why couldn’t he smile at this girl and enjoy her simple attentions without feeling as if every act of companionship were a betrayal?
Sila took the tray of meat from him, observant of the fact that he had little appetite for it. “Bad?” she asked, making a question of her newly learned word. Dimples appeared like small blessings in her cheeks.
He tried to resent her, but could not. What was the Listener thinking, to send her to him? Did he seek to make amends over his part in stealing Ash? Or did he think that one girl could make Raif forget another?
Still waiting on her answer, Sila plucked at the golden fur around her collar, all the while frowning doubtfully at the meat. This small sign of her nervousness affected him, and suddenly he wanted to be kind. Patting his stomach, he said, “Full.”
The girl was quick to mimic him, rubbing the swell of her belly with one hand whilst covering her teeth with the other. “Full,” she said proudly. “Full.”
They sat and looked at each other, shyly at first and then more boldly. She was dressed in a close-fitting coat decorated with fishbone stitching and musk-ox fur, its neck opening tied back to reveal a necklace of tattooed skin. Raif saw her gaze alight on his frost-scarred hands, and then rise to the lore at his throat. She surprised him by reaching out to touch it.
“Warm.”
He smelled her, and he could not speak. She smelled of seal oil and sea salt and sweet heather, and it made the blood rise in him. Suddenly it was hard to think. She leaned closer to inspect the lore, her breath condensing on the down-facing planes of his face. He could see the back of her neck, where soft baby hairs had worked free from her braids. And then she was kissing him, gently, tentatively, her lips moist with seal oil. Raif thought he would lose himself. He wanted to crush her to him, to feel her forehead grind against his. Something desperate came alive within him, and with it the real fear that he would hurt her. Not gently, he pushed her away.
She was breathing hard, and there was hurt in her eyes. She touched her lips. “Good.”
Shame and need sent hot blood to his face. Seconds passed where he fought to gain self-control. He didn’t know what he was doing anymore.
Ash, why did you have to leave me?
The doubts came flooding in. Had she been using him all along, ever since he and Angus had rescued her outside Vaingate? Was protection the only thing she had needed from him? A companion and defender on the journey to the Cavern of Black Ice? No. It couldn’t be true. Ash March had left because she had no choice; he had to believe that to remain sane.
Sila waited, watching him. When he made no move to pull her back she unfastened the ties of her coat. Black eyes met his as she bared small brown breasts and laid her hand upon her heart. “Full.”
Ridiculously, he felt himself close to tears. He had struggled for so long for so little that he had forgotten what it was to receive a gift. He did not deserve her . . . but that knowledge did not stop him from wanting her. With swift movements he pulled off his own borrowed coat, rough bearded-seal hide that shed many hairs. Pushing the thing away he let her look at him; at the great white scars the Bludd swordsmen had raised outside of Duff’s, and the weals and marks of torture he had received at the Dog Lord’s hand. Time and healing had done little to prettify his flesh. Angus Lok’s thick black stitches, which had been made with boiled horse mane, had long since gone—winkled out by Angus’ diabolically sharp knife—yet their uneven tracks remained puckered in his flesh.
Sila studied him. If he had thought to repulse her he was mistaken, for she looked with curiosity and some knowledge of scarred flesh. When she reached out to touch him he moved back.
“Bad,” he said, laying her hand on the center of his chest. Watcher of the Dead. Close to losing himself, he stood. His head was light with confusion and he knew he couldn’t stay here any longer and not seize her. Stumbling, he snatched his coat off the floor.
Sila rose, understanding he meant to leave and meaning to halt him. They stepped toward the entrance at the same moment, and Raif felt her hand close around his arm. “No bad,” she murmured.
Raif shook his head. She did not, could not, know him. Not gently, he lifted her hand away from him and pushed past her. Tucking his head low, he made his way into the night.
———«»——————«»——————«»———
The blinding cold could not cool him. He was too deeply roused and shamed. Unable to bear his thoughts, he headed out toward the sea ice, drawn by the terrible noise of it and the great glowing blueness of its mass. Starlight lit a path. Mountains lay quiet in the north, marking territory no clansman had ever seen. The Lake of Lost Men was out there, and beyond that the Breaking Grounds and the pale endless ice of Endsea. Raif thought of Tern. He had taught his sons and daughter about the land, making maps in the dirt and the snow. His broad fingers would draw lines marking coasts and forests, and sometimes to please Effie he would raise little dirt mounds to represent mountains. Always he spoke of clan. This is the Milk River that runs into the Flow; when clansmen first arrived on its banks its waters ran milky with stone dust from the White Mines of the Sull . . . Here lie the Floating Isles; when Arlech Dregg, the Restless Chief, first laid eyes upon them he set his men to making boats so he could see the isles firsthand. Yet Dreggsmen are no watermen and the boats they built were green and flawed, and halfway across the channel they scuttled and killed all hands . . . Beyond these hills lies the part of the Badlands known as the Rift Valley; the Maimed Men make their home there, and send their dead, eyeless, into the Rift.
Raif stepped onto the hard plate of shore ice that rose like a stone pier from the beach. The great body of ice created its own weather, and currents spiraled around him, channeling up his legs with each step. For the first time since leaving the Listener’s ground he felt the cold. Shocked by its depth and fierceness, he hastily tied the fastenings on his coat. Part of the ice had been hacked here, smashed and then picked out for use in the village. All salt had long since drained from the topmost layers, leaving pure freshwater ice. Raif supposed the sea beneath to be saltier for it; its waters concentrating through the long winter to a stock of strongest brine.
It was time to leave this place. The worst of the white weather had passed, and the unclouded sky promised stillness for the first time in many days. Ash had a good head start on him; their paths were unlikely to cross. He needed supplies, warm clothing. A weapon. Guidance to set him on the right track. Too much to ask from strangers, yet he had no other choice. He could not stay here. He had seen the way the Ice Trapper hunters looked at him; he needed to find a place where men would not fear or distrust him.
He needed to be amongst clan.
“The Gods’ Lights burn this night.”
Raif turned at the sound of the voice and saw the Listener, well wrapped in several shaggy furs, standing behind him on the ice.
“You look the wrong way, Clansman. The Gods’ Lights always show in the north.”
Raif could find no answer to that, other than to turn his face north. He didn’t see them at first, so slowly did they move, rising behind the mountains like green smoke. Then the horizon itself began to glow. It was easy to believe that a forest fire in some distant and unreachable valley raged to give off such light. Even in the clanholds, where the lights were rarely seen, it was known that strange unclannish gods sent them at times of change. Raif didn’t want to think of it. He said, “When did you return, Listener?”
“Last night.”
He should have been surprised, but wasn’t. The little old man was full of tricks. “Did you listen for the seals?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“They did not come.” The Listener moved forward so he stood alongside Raif. His hard, wrinkled face glowed green as the Gods’ Lights brightened. “They swim west, away from the land, and the fish and krill go with them.”
Sensing an accusation there, Raif said, “I leave tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“I’ll need to be shown the path east.”
“You cannot follow her.”
“I know . . . but I also can’t return to my clan.”
“So you head to the Badlands?”
Raif nodded. “I go in search of the Maimed Men.”
The sea ice groaned and lifted, as the sea beneath swelled. Somewhere far in the distance two plates ground together, making a sound like sawing wood. It did not occur to Raif that the Listener had not heard of the Maimed Men; the set of the old man’s jaw spoke for itself. The Maimed Men were clansmen, most of them. Tern said they had “first come into being the year Burnie Dhoone destroyed Clan Morrow out of jealousy for his wife, Fair Maida. Hundreds of unhoused clansmen had nowhere to go, and no clan would take them in for fear of the Dark King’s anger. They headed north, legend said, to the vast bleak spaces of the Badlands, where time and hardness changed them. No man amongst them was whole; the terrible dry cold and fierce Badlands predators saw to that. Every clansman knew they had no honor, for they raided villages, outlying farms, guard posts and hunt parties, and they had no guidestone to offer shelter to the gods. The living was hard, and little was known of them, and Raif thought they would suit him well enough. Traitors and outcasts had few choices.
Raif thought the Listener would say something, some caution, but after many minutes of silence he turned for home. “Come,” he said, “the lights burn red and it disturbs an old man to stand beneath them.”
Raif hesitated.
“The girl has gone. I sent her home with the last of the meat.”
Oh gods. Remembering made him want her as strongly as before. His face heated as he wondered how much the Listener knew.
The old man could read thoughts, Raif swore it, for he frowned deeply and shook his head. Unspeaking, they returned to the warmth and the heat of the Listener’s ground.
The first thing Raif noticed was that the mute raven had been returned to its whalebone perch. The big black bird made a retching sound at Raif’s entrance, throwing its head back and forward as if it were a jester playing sick. Raif took it for an insult and scowled. Insolent bird. The soapstone lamp Sila had diligently tended for two days was now smoking from lack of care. Raif thought he would try and adjust it, but the Listener brushed him away. “Sit,” he said, pointing to the bench against the wall. “Perhaps the next gifts I offer will not be so willfully refused.”
The old man crouched in the center of the chamber and began pulling away the blankets and grass mats that covered the floor. Claw-like hands pried up four stones that concealed a cache hole. Out of honor Raif did not watch as the Listener pulled out a long chest and struggled with metal latches. After a minute of Raif watching shadows, the Listener complained to him, “Can you not see when an old man needs your help?” Chastened, Raif moved quickly to aid him.
The chest was not Ice Trapper-made. Fine wood had been carved and steamed into curves, and filigreed ironwork protected the corners and was mounted as latches on the lid. The latches were badly corroded, and Raif had to take a knife to them to pry them apart. At once the smell of dust and age hit him; old parchment, old metal and mold. The Listener drove his hands deep into the opened chest, scattering clumps of parched brown moss that had been used for packing and keeping its contents dry. “Two things, Clansman. Tell me which is the greater, the arrow or the sword?”